A Group-Based Mobile Agent Routing Protocol for Multitype Wireless Sensor Networks

In the wireless sensor network with multitype sensors and different sample rates, collecting data in an energy-efficient way is a key issue. In this paper, a group based mobile agent routing (GMAR) protocol is presented. In GMAR, a source node grouping algorithm is designed, dividing sensors that can be sampled at same time in one group. To collect data efficiently, the node visiting sequence is statically determined and a mobile agent is designed for each group. A mobile agent is selected dynamically and sent out to aggregate data in the network. Once the next sensor can not be reached, the visiting sequence is adjusted so that current sensor can forward the mobile agent to the sensor next to failure one en route. Simulation results show that GMAR not only reduces number of mobile agents used in gathering data, but also lowers total energy consumption for agent transmission in WSN.