Determining Sink Node Locations in Wireless Sensor Networks

This paper explores the idea of determining the sink node location in wireless sensor networks by applying genetic algorithms. Sink nodes play an important role in and are cluster centers of wireless sensor networks. Optimal location of sink nodes can save transmission energy and improve the transmission speed. Many obstacles in the application scene may prevent the sink nodes to be located in certain places. By applying a genetic algorithm the location optimization problem of the sink nodes is formed with the obstacles in the scene as a constraint. The simulation results show that employing multiple sink nodes in a sensor network would significantly increase the lifetime of the sensor network and the environment of the application scene can be properly considered in the determination of the sink node locations.