Data Rate Adaptive Route Optimization for Sink Mobility Support in Wireless Sensor Networks

Mobile sinks pose several challenges for network protocol design. While moving, a sink should continuously update its topological position information in the sensor nodes to maintain paths. This may require large signaling overhead, resulting in excessive energy consumption. Various schemes have been proposed to reduce the path management overhead. In many of these schemes, the sinks only maintain paths from active sources to reduce the overhead. While reducing the path management overhead, this approach introduces other problems. In this paper, Data Rate Adaptive Route Optimization (DRARO) scheme is proposed. DRARO provides a method for adjusting the route optimization level depending on the amount of data traffic, to minimize overall energy consumption. In addition, DRARO provides ceaseless connection for every sensor nodes and its performance is not affected by the number or movement of the sensing targets.