On the mobility of data collectors in WSN

Abstract

In wireless sensor networks, a data collector node seeks data collected from randomly deployed sensor nodes in a target area. These sensor nodes have a limited communication range to transmit/receive data, and hence can become isolated. It is then challenging to guarantee that the data collector receives the collected data from all sensors in the network while maintaining minimum energy consumption at the sensors as well as at the data collector itself. This challenge increases when the data collector node is mobile. This paper proposes algorithms with the objective of maximizing the amount of data collected by the mobile data collector (MDC) with maximum network lifetime. The proposed algorithms also address the problem of isolated nodes to guarantee all sensors' data is collected. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed algorithms are efficient compared to the existing algorithms in terms of energy consumption, network lifetime and the amount of data collected by the data collector.