Mobility Based Data Collection Algorithm for Wireless Sensor Networks

With the aim of prolonging network lifetime, many energy efficient algorithms and data dissemination protocols have been proposed for wireless sensor networks (WSNs) recently. Since sensor nodes close to sink have to bear more traffic burden to forward data, they will quickly deplete their energy which leads to energy hole and network partition problem. Adding mobility into sensor networks brings in new opportunities to improve network performance in terms of energy consumption, network lifetime, latency etc. In this paper, our Mobility based Data Collection Algorithm (MDCA) for Wireless Sensor Networks is proposed. Multiple mobile sinks are utilized, instead of one static sink, to move back and forth along predetermined paths to collect data. One of the predetermined paths is the diameter of the circle area and the other two are fixed on arc lines. The mobile sinks only sojourn at some fixed points to collect data from relevant areas. The effectiveness of our proposed algorithm is demonstrated through extensive simulation results.