An arbitrary mobility model of Mini-Sinks using controlled data collection for reducing congestion appearance in wireless sensor networks

This paper addresses the appearance of congestion in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) using mobile Mini-Sinks (MSs). Several mobile MSs are moving according to an arbitrary mobility model inside the sensor field for collecting data within their coverage areas based on the controlled Energy Conserving Routing Protocol (ECRP) and forwarding it towards the single main sink. ECRP, based on route diversity, is implemented in MSs and sensors. Thus, a set of multiple paths between MSs and sensors is generated to distribute the global traffic, so as to partially reduce the appearance of congestion over the entire network. Simulations were performed in order to validate the performance of our model. We compare the results obtained with those for a single static sink and mobile sink, and show that our approach achieves better network performances in terms of packet delivery ratio, throughput, end-to-end delay, network lifetime, residual energy, energy and multiple paths overhead.