Data Gathering Scheme for Wireless SensorNetworks Using a Single Mobile Element

Abstract: In this paper we investigate the problem of gathering the data in wireless sensor network using a single Mobile Element. In particular we consider the case where the data are produced by measurements and they need to be delivered to a predefined sink within a given time interval from the time the measurement takes place. A mobile element travels the network in predefined paths, collect the data from the nodes, and deliver them to the sink by a single long-distance transmission. In this problem, the length of the mobile element path is bounded by pre-determined length. This path will visit a subset of the nodes. These selected nodes will work as caching points and will aggregate the other nodes' data. The caching point nodes are selected with the aim of reducing the energy expenditures due to multi-hop forwarding. We provide a heuristic-based solution for this problem. We evaluate the performance of our algorithm by comparing it to the best well-known algorithms from the literature.