Maximizing the Lifetime of Wireless Sensor Networks with Mobile Sink

Abstract

The key parameter that plays a major role in designing a protocol for WSNs is energy efficiency, which is the scarcest resource of sensor nodes and determines their lifetime of sensor nodes. Prolonging the lifetime of sensor networks depends on efficient management of the sensing node of energy. The protocol proposed in this study is a modified routing protocol based on the LEACH protocol, which distributes cluster heads. It also proposes sink mobilization to overcome problems that exist in the case of static sinks. However, controlling the movement of the sink to achieve the most efficient data gathering, both to guarantee the quality of service and to reduce energy consumption, is an important issue in maximizing network lifetime. The novelty of our proposed approach over other mobile-sink-based LEACH-modified protocols is that we assume that the mobile sink traverses along the Y-axis of the sensing area and is relocated at the start of each round by computing the optimal tentative sink node position considering both the geographical distance from the sensors to the sink and the transmission load of the sensors. A comparative analysis based on the standard best-practice benchmarking metrics was performed. The findings of this study clearly demonstrate that the proposed approach outperforms the LEACH protocol in maximizing WSNs lifetime.