Energy-efficient routing for mobile agents in wireless sensor networks

Abstract

In wireless sensor networks, data fusion (in-network processing) is a critical issue because sensor networks are energy-constrained and bandwidth-constrained. Recently, a new scheme based on mobile agent has been proposed to solve the problem. The order and number of nodes on the route traversed by a mobile agent determine the energy consumption, and hence, they have a significant impact on the overall performance of the whole system. Considering the limited transmission range of sensor nodes, we showed that this routing problem in a multi-hop cluster could be modeled as a node-weighted traveling tourist problem (TTP). We proved that the problem was nondeterministic polynomial time (NP)-complete. Then we presented a new approximation algorithm to solve the problem. Simulation experiments demonstrate that the proposed heuristic is more energy-efficient than the two earlier ones.