Controlled Mobility for Efficient Data Gathering in Sensor Networks with Passively Mobile Nodes

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Author

Yuldi Tirta, Bennett Lau, Nipoon Malhotra, Saurabh Bagchi, Zhiyuan Li, and Yung-Hsiang Lu

Tech report number

CERIAS TR 2005-92

Entry type

techreport

Abstract

A large class of sensor networks is used for data collection and aggregation of sensory data about the physical environment. Since sensor nodes are often powered by limited energy sources, such as battery which may be difficult to replace, energy saving is an important criterion in any activity. Some deployments of sensor networks have passive mobile nodes, that is, nodes that are mobile without their own control. For example, a node mounted on an animal for bio-habitat monitoring, or a light-weight node dropped into a river for water quality monitoring. Passive mobility makes the activity of data gathering challenging since the positions of the nodes can change arbitrarily. As a result the nodes may move too far from the data aggregation point, such as a base station, making the data transmission extremely energy intensive. In extreme cases, the nodes may become disconnected from the rest of the network making them unusable. We propose a sensor network architecture with some nodes capable of controlled mobility to solve this problem. Controlled mobility implies the nodes can be moved in a controlled manner in response to commands, with a determined direction, speed, etc.. We present the different categories of nodes in our architecture and mobility algorithms for the two classes, called collector and locator, that have controlled mobility. It is well accepted that efficient data gathering benefits from the knowledge of locations of nodes. Passive mobile nodes makes location determination (i.e. localization) a crucial problem. We propose the use of the locators for this through a novel scheme based on triangulation. We provide theoretical and simulation based analysis of the mobility algorithms with respect to the metrics of energy, latency, and buffer space requirement.

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Date

2005

Key alpha

Controlled Mobility for Efficient Data Gathering in Sensor Networks with Passively Mobile Nodes

Publisher

SUBMITTED TO IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MOBILE COMPUTING, SPECIAL ISSUE ON SENSOR NETWORKS, 3Q 2004

School

Purdue University

Publication Date

2005-01-01

Keywords

Sensor networks, data gathering, passive mobility, controlled mobility, location determination.

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@Techreport{ Controlled Mobility for Efficient Data Gathering in Sensor Networks with Passively Mobile Nodes ,
	title = "Controlled Mobility for Efficient Data Gathering in Sensor Networks with Passively Mobile Nodes",
	author = " Yuldi Tirta, Bennett Lau, Nipoon Malhotra, Saurabh Bagchi, Zhiyuan Li, and Yung-Hsiang Lu",
	year = "2005",
	publisher = "SUBMITTED TO IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MOBILE COMPUTING, SPECIAL ISSUE ON SENSOR NETWORKS, 3Q 2004",
	school = "Purdue University",
	abstract = "A large class of sensor networks is used for data collection and aggregation of sensory data about 
the physical environment. Since sensor nodes are often powered by limited energy sources, such as 
battery which may be difficult to replace, energy saving is an important criterion in any activity. Some 
deployments of sensor networks have passive mobile nodes, that is, nodes that are mobile without their 
own control. For example, a node mounted on an animal for bio-habitat monitoring, or a light-weight 
node dropped into a river for water quality monitoring. Passive mobility makes the activity of data 
gathering challenging since the positions of the nodes can change arbitrarily. As a result the nodes may 
move too far from the data aggregation point, such as a base station, making the data transmission 
extremely energy intensive. In extreme cases, the nodes may become disconnected from the rest of the 
network making them unusable. We propose a sensor network architecture with some nodes capable 
of controlled mobility to solve this problem. Controlled mobility implies the nodes can be moved in 
a controlled manner in response to commands, with a determined direction, speed, etc.. We present 
the different categories of nodes in our architecture and mobility algorithms for the two classes, called 
collector and locator, that have controlled mobility. It is well accepted that efficient data gathering 
benefits from the knowledge of locations of nodes. Passive mobile nodes makes location determination 
(i.e. localization) a crucial problem. We propose the use of the locators for this through a novel scheme 
based on triangulation. We provide theoretical and simulation based analysis of the mobility algorithms 
with respect to the metrics of energy, latency, and buffer space requirement.",
	keywords = "Sensor networks, data gathering, passive mobility, controlled mobility, location determination. ",
}