Energy-efficient data collection in multiple mobile gateways WSN-MCN convergence system

Data gathering is a fundamental task of wireless sensor network (WSN). Recently, mobile sink has been exploited for data gathering in WSN to reduce and balance energy expenditure among sensors. How to energy-efficiently collect and transmit the data in case of multiple mobile sinks is a hot research topic. In this paper, we propose a multiple mobile sinks energy-efficient data collection (MSE²DC) scheme for query-driven data delivery in tree-topology WSN and mobile cellular network (MCN) convergence system. In the system, user equipments (UEs) are equipped with WSN air-interface and act as mobile gateways to supervisory control the WSN data gathering and provide backhaul data links for the WSN. The WSN sensors are purposely activated for data delivery. By implementing the MSE²DC, only necessary sensors should be activated for data delivery while the other sensors could keep sleeping to save energy consumption. Simulation results demonstrate that the significant energy saving of MSE²DC.