Evolutionary game–based trajectory design algorithm for mobile sink in wireless sensor networks

Abstract

In wireless sensor networks, if sink node is stationary, the nodes close to sink will deplete energy faster than those in other areas. The unbalanced energy consumption among the nodes will lead to the energy hole problem, which shortens the network lifetime. To solve the problem, evolutionary game–based trajectory design algorithm for mobile sink in wireless sensor networks is proposed in this article. In evolutionary game model, the average residual energy of each cluster, average intra-cluster energy consumption, and average inter-cluster energy consumption are used to design utility function. The sink will select the cluster with more utility value as its new location and move to the cluster head which has the largest residual energy and the shortest distance to other cluster heads. The simulation results show that the algorithm can effectively balance network load, reduce network energy consumption, prolong the network lifetime, and increase the number of data packets that sink receives.