Analysis of lifetime of wireless sensor network with base station moving on different paths

Energy saving is the top most requirement of the wireless sensor network (WSN) for making it a cost effective technology. In this direction, minimisation of the distance between the communicating nodes should be an obvious choice, as it consumes the biggest chunk of the node energy. But the stationary nature of nodes (including the base station) in the standard WSN does not allow it; thus, the provision of a moving base station has been recently introduced. A few schemes with moving base station have already been developed but they suffer from several drawbacks, for example, the path over which the base station can move has not been considered which is highly unfeasible. An efficient and implementable moving strategy is needed to be developed, which is the primary goal of the present work. The fuzzy logic inference mechanism has been developed and the performance of the same is illustrated in terms of WSN lifetime. Lifetime of a WSN depends on many factors, for example, residual energy of nodes, distance between communicating nodes and base station, etc. Ability of fuzzy logic theory to address more than one factor simultaneously gives it an upper edge over other alternatives. The present work explores the possibilities of building either a circular shaped or a cross-shaped path in the deployment area. A relative study of the movement of base station on these paths has been presented. Simulation results show that the cross path always give better performance than circular path and the lifetime improves with increase in the length of the predefined path.