Study of Cluster-Based Data Forwarding in Sensor Networks with Limited High-Power Mobile Nodes

The wireless sensor network composes of sensors with limited battery power. And, consequently, to save sensor´s energy effectively so as to extend the lifetime of the sensor network is one of important issues for the network deployment. In this article, we assume that limited sense nodes are equipped with high power and moving capabilities in the cluster based sensor network. The main objective of these high power nodes is to support the cluster header, which is going to exhaust its power, for data forwarding. The power consumption required for the movement is much larger than that of data forwarding. If the mobile node moves frequently, it will exhaust its power shortly. In this paper, a novel approach is proposed to effectively guide the movement of the high power nodes by considering the above issues. The simulation results show that the proposed approach can balance the sensor energy and extend the network lifetime when compared to the LEACH-C scheme for the same network environment.