Zone-based sink mobility in wireless sensor networks

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to enhance the network lifetime of WSN. In wireless sensor network (WSN), the sensor nodes are widely deployed in a terrestrial environment to sense and evaluate the physical circumstances. The sensor node near to the sink will deplete more energy faster than other nodes; hence, there arises an energy hole and network partitioning problem in stationary sink-based WSN. Even though many mobile sink-based WSN is formulated to mitigate energy hole, inappropriate placement of sink leads to packet drop and affect the network lifetime of WSN. Therefore, it is necessary to have an efficient sink mobility approach to prevent an aforesaid problem. Design/methodology/approach In this paper, zone-based sink mobility (ZBSM) approach is proposed in which the zone formation along with controlled sink mobility is preferred for energy hole mitigation and optimal sink node placement. In ZBSM, the sink decides to move toward strongly loaded zone (SLZ) for avoiding network partitioning problems where the selection of SLZ can be carried out by using Fuzzy Logic. Findings The performance results confirm that the proposed scheme reduces energy consumption as well as enhances the network lifetime compared with an existing scheme. Originality/value A new optimal sink node placement is proposed to enhance the network lifetime and packet delivery ratio of WSN.