MESNET: Mobile Sink Based Energy Saving Network Management in Wireless Sensor Network

Abstract

Energy saving is the most admitted feature of wireless sensor networks (WSNs) to extend the network lifetime. Multi-hop data forwarding from sensor nodes to the base station reduces energy consumption of individual sensor nodes but generates hot-spot problem. In this work, we propose a multi-hop relay based energy saving network management scheme with mobile sink in WSN named MESNET which reduces energy consumption and extend the network lifetime while maintaining a pre-bound delay between a sensor node and its associated cluster head (CH). In the setup phase, an efficient generation of cluster heads (EGENC) algorithm runs to find a subset of deployed sensor nodes as CHs. CHs are selected based on the residual energy and the energy consumed in the last round data communication of sensor nodes. Number of relay hops between a cluster member node and the CH is restricted to balance the network load. For further balancing the network load, we use an upper limit on number of member nodes of a CH. Efficient selection of the CHs reduces the path length of the mobile sink. Simulation results depict superior performance of our proposed scheme compared to existing work with respect to energy consumption, network lifetime and delay.