Mobile agent-based energy-aware and user-centric data collection in wireless sensor networks

We design an efficient data-gathering system in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) with mobile agents to achieve energy- and time-efficient collection as well as intelligent monitoring to adapt to the numerous demands of users. We first consider a data-gathering system called MAMS where mobile agents (MAs) and a mobile server (MS) collaboratively collect data. MAs collect data over the WSN and intelligently return this to the MS. We then develop dynamic itinerary planning approach for an MA (DIPMA) to find an optimal itinerary that provides more flexible services using widespread WSNs to users. We focus on two key challenges: (1) developing a new data-searching mechanism for making an MA’s itinerary under specified requirements and (2) designing data structures with minimal information stored in sensor nodes, where an MA decides on the next destination based on the information. We validate the proposed solutions by simulation experiments and show DIPMA outperforms the random migration of MAs in terms of execution time by considering the search accuracy of nodes that detect events.