An energy-efficient mobile cluster-based approach for vehicular wireless sensor networks

Significant research is being performed in order to provide advanced vehicular communication systems. In this paper, we propose a mobile cluster that supports the mobility and low-power requirements of sensor nodes attached to a vehicle. Vehicular wireless sensor networks consist of cluster-based grids. The proposed mobile cluster is applied to a vehicle equipped with a sensor node, and consists of a mobile cluster head (MCH) and mobile cluster members (MCMs). The MCMs transmit the sensed data to the sink node through the MCH. The sink node knows the position of the mobile cluster by managing the ID change of the mobile cluster, and the sink node or the sensor node of the vehicular wireless sensor network can transmit data to the mobile cluster. On the other hand, in the case of direct communication, because the sensor node attached to the vehicle operates independently, each sensor node transmits data to the sink node, resulting in heavy energy consumption. The analytical results show that a mobile cluster applied to the vehicle can perform data transmission using less power than direct communication applied to the vehicle.