Smooth path construction for data mule tours in wireless sensor networks

Wireless Multimedia Sensor Networks are a budding topic for researchers which could vastly improve many applications, such as border monitoring networks. The increased amount of data leads to greater issues with energy consumption and decreased network lifetimes. To mitigate these problems, the use of mobile sinks to travel through the network and collect the generated data has been suggested and studied. Consideration has not been given to the abilities of these mobile sinks, such as their ability to turn. We develop an algorithm to create a smooth path, which will allow the use of faster, more turn-constrained mobile sinks, such as a fixed-wing UAV. Our simulations showed our algorithm allowed for faster collection of data than current solutions which can only accommodate slower mobile sinks. When using our algorithm, the performance increases of using a mobile sink are still maintained over in-network data collection.