Duty-cycle SN-multi-point relay algorithm for mobile sink wireless sensor networks

In wireless sensor networks, transceiver's utilisation should be minimised as it is the largest power consuming component of a wireless sensor node. In this study, the authors propose a distributive topology-control algorithm which minimises network's power consumption by allowing the non-relay nodes in the data dissemination tree to switch-off their respective transceivers when communication is not desired. In this algorithm, named duty-cycle SN-multi-point relay (MPR), the sink follows a sojourn-based mobility model and it uses MPR broadcast algorithm for broadcasting its periodic sink location update packets to the network which results in a tree consisting of relay/MPR and non-relay/non-MPR nodes. Duty-cycle SN-MPR algorithm minimises power consumption by allowing the non-relay nodes to switch-off their transceivers in each sink sojourn round. Moreover, all nodes switch-off their transceivers when the sink starts moving to its next sojourn position. Performance evaluation through simulations in network simulator 2 show that the proposed algorithm efficiently minimises the network's power consumption and also offers a better load distribution which helps in increasing the network lifetime.