Abstract
Unlike traditional multihop forwarding among homogeneous static sensor nodes, use of mobile devices for data collection in wireless sensor networks has recently been gathering more attention. It is known that the use of mobility significantly reduces the energy consumption at each sensor, elongating the functional lifetime of the network, in exchange for increased data delivery latency. However, in previous work, mobility and communication capabilities are often underutilized, resulting in suboptimal solutions incurring unnecessarily large latency. In this paper, we focus on the problem of finding an optimal path of a mobile device, which we call “data mule,” to achieve the smallest data delivery latency in the case of minimum energy consumption at each sensor, i.e., each sensor only sends its data directly to the data mule. We formally define the path selection problem and show the problem is \(\mathcal{NP}\)-hard. Then we present an approximation algorithm and analyze its approximation factor. Numerical experiments demonstrate that our approximation algorithm successfully finds the paths that result in 10%-50% shorter latency compared to previously proposed methods, suggesting that controlled mobility can be exploited much more effectively.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsPreview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Chakrabarti, A., Sabharwal, A., Aazhang, B.: Using predictable observer mobility for power efficient design of sensor networks. In: IPSN, pp. 129–145 (2003)
Ma, M., Yang, Y.: SenCar: An energy efficient data gathering mechanism for large scale multihop sensor networks. In: DCOSS, pp. 498–513 (2006)
Shah, R.C., Roy, S., Jain, S., Brunette, W.: Data MULEs: modeling a three-tier architecture for sparse sensor networks. In: SNPA, pp. 30–41 (2003)
Wang, W., Srinivasan, V., Chua, K.C.: Using mobile relays to prolong the lifetime of wireless sensor networks. In: MobiCom., pp. 270–283 (2005)
Kansal, A., Somasundara, A.A., Jea, D.D., Srivastava, M.B., Estrin, D.: Intelligent fluid infrastructure for embedded networks. In: MobiSys., pp. 111–124 (2004)
Vasilescu, I., Kotay, K., Rus, D., Dunbabin, M., Corke, P.: Data collection, storage, and retrieval with an underwater sensor network. In: SenSys., pp. 154–165 (2005)
Todd, M., Mascarenas, D., Flynn, E., Rosing, T., Lee, B., Musiani, D., Dasgupta, S., Kpotufe, S., Hsu, D., Gupta, R., Park, G., Overly, T., Nothnagel, M., Farrar, C.: A different approach to sensor networking for SHM: Remote powering and interrogation with unmanned aerial vehicles. In: Proceedings of the 6th International workshop on Structural Health Monitoring (2007)
Somasundara, A.A., Ramamoorthy, A., Srivastava, M.B.: Mobile element scheduling for efficient data collection in wireless sensor networks with dynamic deadlines. In: RTSS, pp. 296–305 (2004)
Xing, G., Wang, T., Xie, Z., Jia, W.: Rendezvous planning in mobility-assisted wireless sensor networks. In: RTSS, pp. 311–320 (2007)
Sugihara, R., Gupta, R.K.: Data mule scheduling in sensor networks: Scheduling under location and time constraints. UCSD Tech. Rep. CS2007-0911 (2007)
Polastre, J., Hill, J., Culler, D.: Versatile low power media access for wireless sensor networks. In: SenSys, pp. 95–107 (2004)
Rhee, I., Warrier, A., Aia, M., Min, J.: Z-MAC: a hybrid MAC for wireless sensor networks. In: SenSys, pp. 90–101 (2005)
Ye, W., Heidemann, J., Estrin, D.: An energy-efficient MAC protocol for wireless sensor networks. In: INFOCOM, pp. 1567–1576 (2002)
Jea, D., Somasundara, A.A., Srivastava, M.B.: Multiple Controlled Mobile Elements (Data Mules) for Data Collection in Sensor Networks. In: Prasanna, V.K., Iyengar, S.S., Spirakis, P.G., Welsh, M. (eds.) DCOSS 2005. LNCS, vol. 3560, pp. 244–257. Springer, Heidelberg (2005)
Gu, Y., Bozdağ, D., Brewer, R.W., Ekici, E.: Data harvesting with mobile elements in wireless sensor networks. Computer Networks 50(17), 3449–3465 (2006)
Ma, M., Yang, Y.: SenCar: An energy efficient data gathering mechanism for large-scale multihop sensor networks. IEEE Trans. Parallel and Distributed System 18(10), 1476–1488 (2007)
Zhao, W., Ammar, M.: Message ferrying: Proactive routing in highly-partitioned wireless ad hoc networks. In: FTDCS, pp. 308–314 (2003)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2008 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Sugihara, R., Gupta, R.K. (2008). Improving the Data Delivery Latency in Sensor Networks with Controlled Mobility. In: Nikoletseas, S.E., Chlebus, B.S., Johnson, D.B., Krishnamachari, B. (eds) Distributed Computing in Sensor Systems. DCOSS 2008. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 5067. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-69170-9_26
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-69170-9_26
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-69169-3
Online ISBN: 978-3-540-69170-9
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)