Maximizing Network Topology Lifetime Using Mobile Node Rotation

One of the key challenges facing wireless sensor networks (WSNs) is extending network lifetime due to sensor nodes having limited power supplies. Extending WSN lifetime is complicated because nodes often experience differential power consumption. For example, nodes closer to the sink in a given routing topology transmit more data and thus consume power more rapidly than nodes farther from the sink. Inspired by the huddling behavior of emperor penguins where the penguins take turns on the cold extremities of a penguin “huddle”, we propose mobile node rotation, a new method for using low-cost mobile sensor nodes to address differential power consumption and extend WSN lifetime. Specifically, we propose to rotate the nodes through the high power consumption locations. We propose efficient algorithms for single and multiple rounds of rotations. Our extensive simulations show that mobile node rotation can extend WSN topology lifetime by more than eight times on average which is significantly better than existing alternatives.