Maximum Lifetime Routing to Mobile Sink in Wireless Sensor Networks

We address the problem of maximizing the lifetime in a wireless sensor network with energy-constrained sensor nodes and mobile data collection points (sinks). Information generated by the monitoring sensors needs to be routed efficiently to the location where the sink is currently located across multiple hops with different transmission energy requirements. We exploit the capability of the sink to be located in different places during network operation and give a novel linear programming formulation that maximizes network lifetime. We show that the maximum lifetime can only be achieved by solving optimally two joint problems: a scheduling problem that determines the sojourn times of the sink at different locations, and a routing problem in order to deliver the sensed data to the sink in an energy-efficient way. Our model provides the optimal solution to both of these problems and gives the best achievable network lifetime. We evaluate numerically the performance of our model by comparing it with the case of static sink and with previously proposed models that focus mainly on the sink movement patterns and sojourn times, leaving the routing problem outside the linear programming formulation. Our approach always achieves higher network lifetime, as expected, leading to a lifetime up to more than twice that obtained with models previously proposed as the network size increases. It also results in a fair balancing of the energy depletion among the sensor nodes.