On Mobile Sink Node for Target Tracking in Wireless Sensor Networks

Energy efficiency is an important factor in the design of wireless sensor networks. The sensor nodes around the sink node in the network forward the data received from all other nodes to the sink, and thus deplete their energy very quickly. In this paper we propose a scheme which adopts a mobile sink for target tracking applications to maximize the network lifetime. Using the sensed information the sink moves toward the target for reducing the communication cost. Computer simulation shows that the proposed scheme can significantly prolong the network lifetime compared to the earlier schemes where the sink node is fixed or randomly moved