EMS: Efficient mobile sink scheduling in wireless sensor networks

Sink scheduling, in the form of scheduling multiple sinks among the available sink sites to relieve the level of traffic burden, is shown to be a promising scheme in wireless sensor networks (WSNs). However, the problem of maximizing the network lifetime via sink scheduling remains quite a challenge since routing issues are tightly coupled. Previous approaches on this topic either suffer from poor performance due to a lack of joint considerations, or are based on relaxed constraints. Therefore, in this paper, we aim to fill in the research blanks. First, we develop a novel notation Placement Pattern (PP) to bound time-varying routes with the placement of sinks. This bounding technique transforms the problem from time domain into pattern domain, and thus, significantly decreases the problem complexity. Then, we formulate this optimization in a pattern-based way and create an efficient Column Generation (CG) based approach to solve it. Simulations not only demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed algorithm but also substantiate the importance of sink mobility for energy-constrained WSNs.