A Novel Data Retrieving Mechanism in Wireless Sensor Networks with Path-Limited Mobile Sink

Sink mobility has been proposed to optimize energy efficiency and lifetime for wireless sensor networks (WSNs). Many novel data retrieving algorithms or protocols are proposed based on sink mobility; they can be divided into two classes, namely path-unlimited and pathlimited algorithms. In terms of application range, the path-limited algorithms are more applicable in many scenarios. In path-limited WSNs, the challenge is optimizing network energy utilization and lifetime based on the limited conditions. In this paper, we propose a novel data retrieving mechanism named Multiple Enhanced Specified-deployed Subsinks (MESS) mechanism for WSNs with path-limited mobile sink. We argue that deploying some enhanced wireless nodes, namely subsinks to retrieve data locally, and then mobile sink passes though these subsinks and harvests data from them. Simulation results show that MES mechanism can dramatically improve network lifetime compare to traditional mechanism.