Energy efficient cluster based approach for data collection in wireless sensor networks with multiple mobile sink

A wireless sensor network could be either homogeneous network or heterogeneous network. Depending upon the nature of application requirements a wireless sensor node could either be static or mobile one. When the nodes are static, data collection by the sink from various sources will be difficult and time consuming process. Also static deployment of sink as well as source nodes lead to energy hole problem because the nodes in one hop neighbor of sink must always be active to transmit the data from the sources down to it. This energy hole problem leads to network partition and reduction in life time of any wireless sensor network. So, to increase the lifetime of a wireless sensor network and energy efficient routing mobile sink based approach could be used. Due to the mobility of sink data collection will be carried out faster in time and energy hole problem could be eliminated. Introduction of a single mobile sink also leads to a problem like coverage area, time delay due to obstacles, interference or limited entry and pause time, time synchronization between the source and sink, link failure or node failure and so on. By considering the residual energy of each node and reliable data transfer in a wireless sensor network a new cluster based approach using controlled flooding is proposed with multiple mobile sink for prolonging the life time of a wireless sensor network. Irrespective of the medium this approach uses predetermined and controlled mobility model for determining the direction of movement for mobile sink. This approach uses some set of rules for path reconstruction phase with limited flooding of update message consisting of current location of the sink and Time Of Arrival (TOA). Simulation result shows that the multiple mobile sink with reduced reconstruction of route has improved the energy efficiency and increased lifetime of wireless sensor network.