A GPS-less on-demand mobile sink-assisted data collection in wireless sensor networks

The autonomous data collector is a role recently introduced to improve the performance of Wireless Sensor Networks. When a prompt response for data processing and offloading is necessary, i.e. in the case of event-driven networks, a mobile flying sink could be a good option for that role. In this paper, we introduce FreeFall, a distributed algorithm for the autonomous navigation of a mobile collector through a WSN for on-demand data offloading that does not rely on an absolute coordinate system. We show that, under fairly common circumstances, it is possible to set the trajectory of the mobile sink and fulfill the offloading requests without the needs of additional equipment installed on nodes. We show how our system is preferable over more classical routing solutions especially in the presence of localized generation of large amounts of information.