A Heuristic-Based Efficient Path Planning Scheme for Data Gathering WSNs Using Mobile Sinks

Mobile Sinks (MSs) are mobile devices that travel along a specified path to collect data from sensor nodes. Without the MSs, the system has to determine routes, through which all sensor nodes could send their data to a base station (or a sink node) in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs). The routing and forwarding data hop-by-hop via the route also incurs more energy consumption. However, the usage of the MS to gather the data from all sensor nodes (SNs) would be inefficient as it might require a long round-trip time and more traveling energy. Rendezvous points (RPs) are introduced as representatives for multiple sensor nodes. The data from sensor nodes are stored at the nearby RPs and are transferred to the MS later when it arrives. As a result, the number of data-collection points is lower and the MS's traveling time is less. However, the problems of determining the appropriate number of RPs to cover the entire WSN are challenging. This study proposes a heuristic technique (called heuristic-based efficient path planning or EPP) for selecting RPs while considering the MS's limited distance. The sensor nodes are grouped and assigned to RPs; reducing the energy consumption to relay data of each SN. Our proposed method outperforms WRE and CB in terms of network lifetime (by 5% and 19%, respectively).