Delay-Aware Energy-Efficient Routing towards a Path-Fixed Mobile Sink in Industrial Wireless Sensor Networks

Area of Science:

• Computer Science
• Network Engineering
• Wireless Communication

Background:

• Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are increasingly incorporating mobile elements for enhanced data collection.
• Existing routing schemes struggle to balance energy efficiency and delay constraints with path-fixed mobile sinks.

Purpose of the Study:

• To propose DERM, a delay-aware, energy-efficient routing algorithm for WSNs with path-fixed mobile sinks.
• To achieve a balance between delivery latency and energy conservation in WSNs.

Main Methods:

• Developed a location-based forwarding technique for energy-optimal anycast to time-varying regions.
• Implemented a lightweight sink location calibration method combined with mobility pattern estimation.
• Designed a fault-tolerant track routing mechanism to address location errors.

Main Results:

• DERM effectively balances delivery latency and energy conservation.
• The algorithm achieves considerable energy savings while meeting delay constraints.
• Maintained a high data delivery ratio in evaluations.

Conclusions:

• DERM offers a viable solution for delay-aware, energy-efficient data collection in WSNs with mobile sinks.
• The proposed methods enhance network performance and reliability.