Cluster-based communication topology selection and UAV path planning in wireless sensor networks

In conventional wireless sensor networks (WSNs) to conserve energy Low Energy Adaptive Clustering Heirarchy (LEACH) is commonly used. Energy conversation is far more challenging for large scale deployments. This paper deals with selection of sensor network communication topology and the use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) for data gathering. Particle Swarm Optimzation (PSO) is proposed as an optimization method to find the optimal clusters in order to reduce the energy consumption, bit error rate (BER), and UAV travel time. PSO is compared to LEACH using a simulation case and the results show that PSO outperforms LEACH in terms of energy consumption and BER while the UAV travel time is similar. The numerical results further illustrate that the performance gap between them increases with the number of cluster head nodes. The reduced energy consumption means that the network life time can be significantly extended and the lower BER will increase the amount of data received from the entrie network.