Fuzzy PSO-based algorithm for controlling base station movements in a wireless sensor network

Abstract

There are strong limitations on the software, energy, and hardware capacities of a wireless sensor network (WSN) and therefore algorithms that increase the lifetime of a WSN are of great significance. In this paper, a mobile base station movement control strategy for WSNs is proposed. This strategy combines fuzzy logic node clustering, fuzzy cluster-head selection, and fuzzy logic control (FLC) of the base station movements. After determining cluster-heads, according to the distance and energy of the heads, the base station moves on a predefined square, triangle, circle, or hexagon shaped path. Direction and speed of the movements are controlled by FLC. In addition, a particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm is applied to optimally calculate the number of clusters, path shape and size, and the base station's speed vector amplitude and direction. The proposed strategy is numerically simulated for a WSN with randomly distributed nodes. The fuzzy clustering algorithm of this paper is compared with other conventional clustering methods. Moving the base station by the proposed FLC is also compared with a static base station. Results confirm substantial improvement in the lifetime of the moving base station WSN.