Optimization of Wireless Sensor Network by Applying Small World Concept with UAVs

Abstract

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) composed of many homogeneous sensors have attracted more attention especially with the integration of 5G networks. However, this kind of network suffers from significant latency during data transmission. Latency can be reduced by capitalizing on the Small World characteristic, in combination with the flexibility of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). The main work of interest of this paper is how to deploy UAVs and design UAV-assisted Small World WSNs. Firstly, we propose a region partition method based on routing hops to determine the target area for each UAV. Next, the Air-to-Ground channel model is adopted to determine the optimal altitude of UAVs, and the optimal horizontal location of UAVs formulated as a Mixed-Integer Nonlinear Programming problem which depends on the sensors distribution is put forward. Finally, an algorithm which analyzes the data transmission flow to create shortcuts between UAVs and sensor nodes is introduced.The simulation results fully validate the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed scheme which not only reduces the data transmission delay but also attains high throughput compared with the traditional WSN. Furthermore, the optimal deployment scheme outperforms the random deployment on average.