Abstract
Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have been used for monitoring animals but when their habitats have difficult access and are areas of a large expanse, remote monitoring by classic techniques becomes a difficult task. The use of traditional WSNs requires a restrictive number of hops in a multi-hoping routing scheme, traveling long distances to the sink node where data is stored by nodes and UAVs are used to collect data by visiting each node. However, the use of UAVs is not straightforward since the energy balance between the WSN and UAV has to be carefully calibrated. Building on this, we propose two data collection schemes in clustered based WSNs: (1) WSN oriented and (2) UAV oriented. In the former, nodes within each cluster member (CM), send information to their cluster head (CH) and for recollection, the UAV visits all CHs. As the UAV visits many CHs the flight time is increased. In the latter, all CHs send data from their CMs to a sink node, hence, the UAV only visits this node, reducing the flying time but with a higher system energy cost. To find the most suitable scheme for different monitoring conditions in terms of the average energy consumption and the buffer capacity of the system, we develop a mathematical model that considers both the dynamics of the WSN along with the UAV.
Highlights
Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have been evolving since the internet, communication, and information technologies have been converging as the size of commercial sensor nodes have shrunk while increasing the processing capacity and consuming less energy
The main performance parameter for the animal tracking system is the total energy consumed by the WSN green and the average buffer occupation of each node to measure the data capacity of the network
This paper gives clear guidelines for the selection of the data collection schemes according to the monitored area based on the system’s lifetime
Summary
Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have been evolving since the internet, communication, and information technologies have been converging as the size of commercial sensor nodes have shrunk while increasing the processing capacity and consuming less energy. WSNs are composed of many nodes communicating among them to convey relevant information for a particular application that defines the requirements and specifications that they must have [1] These WSNs have been increasingly used in cases where human access is difficult or the costs are significantly expensive for example, in environmental, vegetation, farming, or animal monitoring. In these specific applications, sensor nodes with limited processing and memory capacity, small, cheap, low energy consumption, and long lifetime are usually used and can be deployed in a certain area for different purposes [2,3]. It is expected that sensor nodes provide a large battery operation time in areas of Sensors 2020, 20, 262; doi:10.3390/s20010262 www.mdpi.com/journal/sensors
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