Delay-Minimized Route Design for Wireless Sensor-Actuator Networks

Wireless sensor-actuator networks (WSANs) have recently been suggested as an enhancement to the traditional sensor networks by employing powerful and mobile actuators. Multiple actuators can patrol along different routes and communicate with the static sensors. To minimize the data collection time, an effective route design is crucial for the actuators to travel in the sensing field. In this paper, we present a mathematical formulation of the route design problem, and show that the general problem is computationally intractable. We then develop a practically efficient algorithm to reduce the waiting time for the sensors. Our algorithm adaptively differentiates the actuator visiting frequencies to the sensors according to their relative weights and data generation patterns. Simulation results demonstrate that our algorithm can effectively reduce the overall data collection time.