Heuristic approach for data gathering in wireless sensor networks

Future device to device communication using the LTE system bring new opportunities for application development. In the case of wireless sensor networks, unmanned aerial vehicles with LTE capabilities could be used to increase the network lifetime, while ensuring high transfer rates between LTE capable sensor nodes and the aerial vehicles. In this article we propose a hybrid heuristic algorithm able to design a set of efficient paths to gather the data generated by sensor nodes, which are scattered over a given area, while ensuring that data collected will not arrive outdated to the base station. This is particularly useful when sensors generate data with time delivery deadlines. Results show that the approach is able to solve the data gathering problem efficiently presenting, for most data sets and time delivery deadline ranges, a high certainty degree regarding the quality of the solution.