A biologically inspired mobility control framework for energy conservation in sensor networks

• Published in: International Journal of Communication Systems
• Main Authors: Rao, Jayanthi, Biswas, Subir
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Wiley 2009
• Subjects: Antarctic; The Antarctic; Antarc*; Emperor penguins
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/dac.1006; https://api.wiley.com/onlinelibrary/tdm/v1/articles/10.1002%2Fdac.1006; https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/dac.1006

Abstract This paper presents a paradigm for extending network life by introducing energy‐aware mobility in wireless sensor networks. The concept of controlled mobility for energy saving has been motivated by a natural grouping behavior that is observed in Emperor penguins in the Antarctic region. During the winters, a group of those penguins form a closely huddled group to improve their collective heat insulation. Individual penguins within a group exhibit a local mobility pattern that ensures that each individual spends roughly equal amount of time at the periphery of the group, where heat loss is the maximum. As a result, the total heat loss of the group is thought to be evenly distributed across all the individuals. In this paper, we first draw a parallel between the heat loss of a penguin at the group periphery, and the routing energy burden of sensor nodes near the aggregating base stations in a sensor network. Then we develop a fully distributed and localized mobility control algorithm for collective extension of the network life. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed controlled mobility paradigm can significantly extend a sensor network's operating life even in situations where the energy cost of physical node movement is modeled as high as up to four orders of magnitude larger than the energy cost for packet transmission. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.