A Partition-based data collection scheme for wireless sensor networks with a mobile sink

Mobility-assisted data collection in wireless sensor networks brings in new opportunities to improve the energy efficiency of sensor nodes. However, it also introduces new challenges such as large data collection latency. The optimal usage of the limited mobility of mobile elements in the network is of great importance to reduce this latency, and a lot of research efforts have been devoted to it. In this paper, focusing on the scenario where a mobile sink is available to carry out the data collection, a simple and efficient Partition-based Nearest Job Next data collection scheme is proposed, which schedules the travel of the mobile sink based on a clustered structure of the network. Corresponding geometrical probability-based analysis is also presented to shed light on the performance of the scheme. The efficiency of the scheme, along with the accuracy of the analysis, is verified through extensive simulation.