Constructing Small Worlds in WSNs with UAV Trajectory Optimization

Abstract

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) are composed of multiple sensors with sensing, computing, and wireless communication capabilities. Small-world features are the very important discovery in networks. This paper proposes that combination of the Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) and WSN can save the energy consumption and improve network lifetime, because of the UAVs' flexibility and their excellent air channel quality. This paper shows the method that adding the UAV can transform the ordinary WSN into WSN with small world characteristics. Then according to the distribution of sensor nodes, an improved method is designed to optimize the flight path of the UAV. The results show that both the original path and the optimized path can make the WSN have the small-world characteristics, and the energy consumption of each node in the network decreases significant. The problem of uneven energy consumption in the network is also solved.