Objective-Variable Tour Planning for Mobile Data Collection in Partitioned Sensor Networks

Abstract

Data collection with mobile elements can improve energy efficiency and balance load distribution in wireless sensor networks (WSNs). However, complex network environments bring about inconvenience of path design. This work addresses the network environment issue, by presenting an objective-variable tour planning (OVTP) strategy for mobile data gathering in partitioned WSNs. Unlike existing studies of connected networks, our work focuses on disjoint networks with connectivity requirement and serves delay-hash applications as well as energy-efficient scenarios respectively. We first design a converging-aware location selection mechanism, which macroscopically converges rendezvous points (RPs) to lay a foundation of a short tour. We then develop a delay-aware path formation mechanism, which constructs a short tour connecting all segments by a new convex hull algorithm and a new genetic operation. In addition, we devise an energy-aware path extension mechanism, which selects appropriate extra RPs according to specific metrics in order to reduce the energy depletion of data transmission. Extensive simulations demonstrate the effectiveness and advantages of the new strategy in terms of path length, energy depletion, and data collection ratio.