Delay-bounded sink mobility in wireless sensor networks

This paper exploits sink mobility to prolong the network lifetime in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) where the information delay caused by moving the sink should be bounded. We build a unified framework for analyzing this joint sink mobility and routing problem. We offer a mathematical modeling that is general and captures diversified issues, e.g. sink mobility, routing, delay, etc. We discuss the induced subproblems and present efficient solutions for them. Then, we generalize these solutions and propose a polynomial-time optimal algorithm for the origin problem. In simulations, we show the benefits of involving a mobile sink. We also show that the impact of the delay bound on the network lifetime.