Effective Data Collection Scheme by Mobile Agent over Wireless Sensor Network

In tree-based wireless sensor networks (WSNs), multihop sensor nodes require a longer time frame to send sensed data to a sink node as the number of hops increases. The time taken for delivery of sensed data becomes a critical issue when a large WSN is deployed. This paper proposes a new data collection scheme with rapid data delivery that utilizes the so-called mobile agent technique. The proposed scheme achieves high data collection efficiency while not relying on route optimization unlike conventional data collection techniques. Simulation results show that the larger the size or the maximum hops of the network, the more effective the proposed scheme becomes. Effectiveness of the proposed scheme is also confirmed through field experiments with actual sensor devices.