Architecture of Wireless Sensor Networks with Mobile Sinks: Multiple Access Case∗

∗Part of the manuscript was presented in “Dense Sensor Networks with Mobile Sinks,” IEEE International Conference on Acoustics. Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP), vol. 3, pp. 677–680, Philadelphia PA, Mar. 2005. Manuscript was submitted to International Journal on Distributed Sensor Networks, in Sept. 2005, revised in May 2006.

Abstract

We propose to develop Wireless Sensor Networks with Mobile Sinks (MSSN), under high sensor node density, where multiple sensor nodes need to share one single communication channel in the node-to-sink transmission. By exploiting the tradeoff between the successful information retrieval probability and the nodes energy consumption, a number of multiple nodes transmission scheduling algorithms are proposed. Both optimal and suboptimal algorithms, which exhibit exponential and linear complexity respectively, are discussed under the desired application. Computer simulations show that suboptimal algorithms perform nearly as good as the optimal one. The study leads to the cross-layer Wireless Link layer design for MSSN.

Keywords:

• Wireless Sensor Networks
• Transmission Scheduling
• Multiple Access
• Wireless Link Layer
• Energy Consumption

Notes

∗Part of the manuscript was presented in “Dense Sensor Networks with Mobile Sinks,” IEEE International Conference on Acoustics. Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP), vol. 3, pp. 677–680, Philadelphia PA, Mar. 2005. Manuscript was submitted to International Journal on Distributed Sensor Networks, in Sept. 2005, revised in May 2006.

6. Standard IEEE 802.15.4. MAC and PHY Layer specification for low-rate wireless personal area networks (PR-WPANs).

7. Standard IEEE 802.11. Wireless LAN medium access control(MAC) and physical layer(PHY) specifications.