Performance Evaluation of Mini-sinks Mobility Using Multiple Paths in Wireless Sensor Networks

This paper presents a new approach based on the use of many data collectors, which we designate Mini-Sinks (MSs), instead of a single sink to collect the data in order to improve Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) performance. One or mode MS are mobile and move according to a controlled arbitrary mobility inside the sensor field in order to maintain a fully-connected network topology, collecting data within their coverage areas and forwarding it towards the single main sink. Energy Conserving Routing Protocol (ECRP), based on route diversity, is implemented in MSs and sensors in order to optimize the transmission cost of the forwarding scheme. A set of multiple routing paths between MSs and sensors is generated to distribute the global traffic over the entire network. Simulations were performed in order to validate the performance of our new approach. We compare the results obtained with those for a single static sink and mobile sink, and show that our approach can achieve better performances such as packet delivery ratio, throughput, end-to-end delay, network lifetime, residual energy, energy and routing diversity overhead.