A hybrid moving strategy in wireless sensor networks

Mobile sinks are used widely in wireless sensor networks to balance the load among sensors and improve the network lifetime. But, the data transmission delay becomes larger while mobile sinks are used. Although using a static sink has shorter lifetime than a mobile sink, it can get a relatively lower transmission delay. In order to balance the lifetime and the transmission delay of a wireless sensor network, we propose a hybrid moving strategy by using a static sink in the center of a cellular network and a mobile sink locating at the periphery of the area to collect data collaboratively. Under this strategy, the sensor nodes can sent their data to the sink in shorter hops routing and thus save great amount of energy. Our moving strategy can improve the lifetime to 4 times compared with the strategy using only one single static sink. Also, by adopting our strategy, the transmission delay can be reduced to one fourth compared with the strategy using only one mobile sink.