Genetic Algorithm Based Length Reduction of a Mobile BS Path in WSNs

Energy in WSNs can be significantly saved by integrating a mobile BS, which on the other hand may impose the network an unacceptable latency. In this paper, we overcome this problem by making the path of the mobile BS as short as possible. Our method mainly consists of three steps. First, we construct a virtual network from which to choose the location that the BS must arrive. Next, we apply a weighting scheme to each points of the virtual network, and select a minimum number of them by implementing a genetic algorithm, while at the same time guarantee the network connectivity and coverage. Finally, after showing its NPC property, we construct the optimized BS path based on the point set obtained in the second step. Our method is testified by comprehensive experiments. The results show that it can greatly reduce the number of points that the BS must arrive, and then get us an optimized mobile BS path.