Using mobile relays to prolong the lifetime of wireless sensor networks

In this paper we investigate the benefits of a heterogeneous architecture for wireless sensor networks composed of a few resource rich mobile nodes and a large number of simple static nodes. These mobile nodes can either act as mobile relays or mobile sinks. To investigate the performance of these two options and the trade-offs associated with these two options, we first consider a finite network. We then compute the lifetime for different routing algorithms for three cases (i) when the network is all static (ii) when there is one mobile sink and (iii) when there is one mobile relay. We find that using the mobile node as a sink results in the maximum improvement in lifetime. We contend however that in hostile terrains, it might not always be possible for the sink to be mobile. We then investigate the performance of a large dense network with one mobile relay and show that the improvement in network lifetime over an all static network is upper bounded by a factor of four. Also, t...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2005
• Where: MOBICOM
• Authors: Wei Wang 0002, Vikram Srinivasan, Kee Chaing Chua
• Keywords: MOBICOM 2005, Mobile Node, Mobile Relays, Mobile Sink