Improved sensor network lifetime with multiple mobile sinks

A critical issue for data gathering in wireless sensor networks is the formation of energy holes near the sinks. Sensors near the sinks have to participate in relaying data on behalf of other sensors and thus will deplete their energy very quickly, resulting in network partitioning and limitation of the network lifetime. The solution that we propose in this paper is to use mobile sinks that change their location when the nearby sensors’ energy becomes low. In this way the sensors located near sinks change over time. In deciding a new location, a sink searches for zones with richer sensor energy. First, we study the improvement in network lifetime when sinks move on a predetermined path, along the perimeter of a hexagonal tiling. Two cases are considered for data gathering when sinks stop in the hexagon’s corners and when the sinks stop on multiple locations on the hexagon perimeter. This study shows an improvement of up to 4.86 times in network lifetime. Second, we design a distributed and localized algorithm used by the sinks to decide their next movement location such that the virtual backbone formed by the sinks remains interconnected at all times. Two extensions of the distributed algorithm, coverage requirement and limitation of the time-delivery requirement, are also addressed. Simulation results are presented to verify our approaches. © 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.