Mobile data sink-based time-constrained data collection from mobile sensors: a heuristic approach

In wireless sensor network, sensors are deployed to sense useful data from environment. Sensors are energy-constrained devices. To prolong the sensor network lifetime for large-scale network, nowadays mobile data sinks (MDSs) (collectors/mules) are used for collecting the sensed data from the sensors. In this environment, sensor nodes can directly transfer their sensed data to the MDS. Sensors have limited memory. Therefore, to avoid buffer overflow, the data must be collected by the MDSs within a predefined time interval. The authors assume that a set of mobile sensors are moving arbitrarily on a set of paths. The authors objective is to collect data periodically from all mobile sensors using minimum number of MDSs within a fixed time interval. Here, a data-gathering algorithm is proposed. The authors analyse the complexity of the problem, and evaluate time complexity and performances of the proposed solution.