Optimizing speed of mobile data collector in Wireless Sensor Network

Introducing mobility in some of the components of WSN is one of the promising techniques for improving performance of the network in terms of connectivity, lifetime, data collection and data latency. Deliberate and controlled mobility, when best adjusted in terms of trajectory and speed, enhance the performance of the network to a desired level. This paper focus on the implementation details and performance analysis of controlling and fine tuning the speed of mobile data collector in WSNs. We consider a sensor network where nodes are deployed and organized into clusters on the basis of distance from each other. Nodes sense their environment and transmit data to their corresponding cluster heads, which in turn send it to a mobile data collector when it is in communication range. The goal is to optimize the speed of mobile data collector, and enable it to adaptively adjust it motion; move slower in areas where more time is needed to collect the required data and speeds up where there are no such constraints. This is achieved through cooperation between mobile nodes and static sensor nodes, through information sharing. Our simulation results show significant increase in data collection rate and reduction in the overall time and number of laps mobile data collector spend in data gathering.