Home // SENSORCOMM 2013, The Seventh International Conference on Sensor Technologies and Applications // View article
Authors:
Shinya Toyonaga
Yuki Fujita
Daichi Kominami
Masayuki Murata
Keywords: mobile sink; controlled mobility; sensor network.
Abstract:
Reduced energy consumption and extension of network lifetime are important challenges for wireless sensor networks, due to the energy-constraint properties of its elements. To solve these problems, many studies have been conducted on incorporating mobile sinks and controlled mobility into wireless sensor networks. When a mobile sink relays data from a sensor network to an operator, some sensors can save energy by reducing the number of transmitted packets and the communication range. Another important advantage is that sparse and disconnected networks are better handled when a mobile node relays packets between networks. In existing methods, however, all or some nodes must know their own location through the use of devices such as Global Positioning System (GPS) receivers. Yet it entails a high cost when each node is equipped with a GPS receiver. Moreover, GPS-based localization solutions cannot provide reliable location estimate in indoor environments, and in the presence of obstacles. We propose a method for controlling the mobility of a mobile sink so that it moves toward a targeted sensor node without GPS. In the proposed method, a sensor node selected as a target node broadcasts a control message, and each node records a hop count from the target node so as to construct a gradient field. A mobile sink can approach the target node using the gradient field. We evaluate our method by computer simulation and experiments using a cleaning robot that implements our method. We show that a mobile node with our proposed method can reach a target node in about 6 min.
Pages: 27 to 32
Copyright: Copyright (c) IARIA, 2013
Publication date: August 25, 2013
Published in: conference
ISSN: 2308-4405
ISBN: 978-1-61208-296-7
Location: Barcelona, Spain
Dates: from August 25, 2013 to August 31, 2013