An energy-efficient path determination strategy for mobile data collectors in wireless sensor network

In wireless sensor networks, introduction of mobility has been considered to be a good strategy to greatly reduce the energy dissipation of the static sensor nodes. This task is achieved by considering the path in which the mobile data collectors move to collect data from the sensors. In this work a data gathering approach is proposed in which some mobile collectors visit only certain sojourn points (SPs) or data collection points in place of all sensor nodes. The mobile collectors start out on their journey after gathering information about the network from the sink, gather data from the sensors and transfer the data to the sink. To address this problem, an algorithm named Mobile Collector Path Planning (MCPP) is proposed. MCPP schema is validated via computer simulation considering both obstacle free and obstacle-resisting network and based on metrics like energy consumption by the static sensor nodes and network life time. The simulation results show a reduction of about 12% in energy consumption and 15% improvement in network lifetime as compared with existing algorithms.

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