A Dynamic Buffer Zone Based Algorithm for Single Mobile Sink in Wireless Sensor Networks

Limit energy is a severe bottleneck of wireless sensor networks (WSNs), and limits network lifetime of WSNs. To extend network lifetime, buffer zone has been proposed. Sensors send their data packets to buffer zone. The sensors in buffer zone buffer the data packets. And then the sink visits the buffer zone to collect the data packets. This leads to that the loads of the sensors in buffer zone are too high and the sensors die quickly. To further extend network lifetime, an algorithm based on dynamic buffer zone has been proposed in this paper. The algorithm divides the whole network area into some areas, and lets all areas act as the buffer zone in turn. And the reasonable times each zone acts as the buffer zone are computed with linear programming. The simulation results have shown that our proposed algorithm notably extends network lifetime.