A new MILP formulation and distributed protocols for wireless sensor networks lifetime maximization

This paper concerns the definition of an analytical model and distributed protocols for determining the routes of a mobile data collector (sink) traveling through the nodes of a wireless sensor network (WSN). The routes are determined with the overall aim of maximizing the network lifetime. The contribution of our work is twofold. First, we introduce a novel mixed integer linear programming formulation for determining the sink's route and the sojourn time at the different "sink sites." The model takes into account realistic parameters such as the maximum distance the sink can travel between sites, different sink mobility rates, as well as the costs to support and perform data routing. Solutions to the model provide the route of the sink as a sequence of sites and the sojourn times at those sites that induce the maximum network lifetime. We then propose the Greedy Maximum Residual Energy (GMRE) protocol for sink mobility. GMRE is distributed and localized, thus being suitable for wireless sensor networking. In GMRE the sink greedily keeps moving toward those areas in the network where there is the most residual energy, as if "drawn" to them. This heuristic is then compared with a very simple and energy-unaware protocol where the next site in the sink route is chosen randomly and uniformly each time the sink moves. Simulation results show that GMRE leads to improvements in network lifetime that are four times as much as the lifetime when the sink is kept static, while balancing energy consumption throughout the network. At the same time, we show how the expected increases in data latency are reasonably contained. © 2006 IEEE.