Mobile sink based data collection for energy efficient coordination in wireless sensor network using cooperative game model

Multi-hop communication in a wireless sensor network leads to unbalanced energy consumption, creating “hot spots” around the sensor nodes. Selection of paths for the mobile sinks for hot-spot mitigation is a challenging task. In this work, we propose two multiple mobile sinks based data collection schemes, namely Direct Send and Via Static Gateway. The mobile sinks move throughout the network following two mobility patterns alternatively to reduce energy consumption and data loss and maximize network life and data collection. We formulate the problem as cooperative game with non-transferable utility, where the mobile sinks are the players. Payoff that the players receive is a function of goodness factor and energy consumption. Goodness factor is assigned to each player by the base station depending on how varied the collected data is. On the basis of received goodness factor, the players select their strategies cooperatively in order to increase their individual payoffs. The proposed algorithms are validated through simulation experiments using C programming language. Hardware test bed studies are done using Arduino sensor motes equipped with XBee antenna to validate our proposed methodology.