Age and energy aware data collection scheme for urban flood monitoring in UAV-assisted Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) have become pivotal in numerous applications, including environmental monitoring, precision agriculture, and disaster response. In the context of urban flood monitoring, utilizing unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) presents unique challenges due to the dynamic and unpredictable nature of the environment. The primary challenges involve designing strategies that maximize data collection while minimizing the Age of Information (AoI) to ensure timely and accurate decision-making. Efficient data collection is crucial to capturing all relevant information and providing a comprehensive understanding of flood dynamics. Simultaneously, reducing AoI is essential, as outdated data can lead to delayed or incorrect responses, potentially worsening the situation. Addressing these challenges is critical for the effective use of WSNs in urban flood monitoring. Initially, we formulate the problem as a mixed integer non-linear programming (MINLP) problem. Further, it is solved using a Lagrangian-based branch and bound technique by converting it into an unconstrained problem. Then, for large-scale WSN, we propose a hybrid optimization technique which combines a genetic algorithm with a particle swarm optimization technique to simultaneously maximize the data collection and reduce the AoI of the collected data with the constraint of energy consumption of the UAVs. Simulation results demonstrate that our proposed algorithm outperforms existing approaches in terms of both data collection and AoI.