JOURNAL OF TELECOMMUNICATIONS, VOLUME 32, ISSUE 2, APRIL 2016

Controlled Sink Mobility for Efficient Design of

a Wireless Sensor Network
Dr. Mohammed A. Abdala and Zahraa A. Ismaeel
Abstract One of the most promising research ways for improving the performance of wireless sensor networks (WSNs) is
taking the advantage of the mobility of some of the components of the network. This reduces the load on the nodes around the
sink that always forwarding packets of other nodes as well as their own packets. In this paper, two controlled sink mobility
algorithms are proposed named Distance Based Controlled Sink Mobility (DBCSM) and Improved Distance Based Controlled
Sink Mobility (IDBCSM) algorithms for controlling the movement of the sink by moving it towards the farthest nodes which have
higher remaining energy and lower load. The performance of the two algorithms are evaluated and compared with static,
random and predictable mobility strategies using NS2 network simulator. Results show a network lifetime improvement of about
19%-162%.
Index Terms Controlled Mobility, Network Lifetime, Sink Mobility, Wireless Sensor Networks.

1 INTRODUCTION

wireless sensor network (WSN) is a special type of

ad hoc network that consists of a number of sensor nodes

distributed over a geographical area [1]. A sensor network has typically two different types of nodes: sink and
sensor nodes. A sensor node, a low cost and low power
device, is responsible for sensing the environment and
communicating with other nodes in the network. The sink
node (the base station) is the node where data are gathered and interpreted [2]. Sensor nodes have limited energy to do their tasks [3]. This means that there is a limited
time for the nodes to transmit, receive or process data.
Thus, the lifetime of the network, the time until the death
of the first node, becomes one of the most important performance metrics [4]. Thus, a lot of research effort has
been focused on designing efficient techniques for reducing the energy consumption of nodes and increasing the
network lifetime. In general, these techniques can be classified into five main groups: duty cycling, power control,
data reduction, energy-efficient routing and mobility [5, 6,
7].
Mobility is considered one of the most important
solutions of the energy problem. By moving the network
components, the energy consumption is better balanced
among the nodes and therefore, the network lifetime is
improved [8]. There are three types of mobility:
Random mobility: network components move in a random pattern so that the next position cannot be expected,
such as the movement of an animal or a human [9].
Predictable mobility: network components move in a
predefined pattern, such as the movement of a train,
snaking and spiral movement [9, 10].

Dr. Mohammed A. Abdala is with Department of Computer Engineering,

Al-Nahrain University, Baghdad, Iraq.
Zahraa A Ismaeel is with Department of Information and Communications
Engineering, Al-Nahrain University, Baghdad, Iraq.

Controlled Mobility: the movement of the network components is predefined and can be programed. It depends
on key network parameters, such as the remaining energy
of the nodes, energy consumption patterns, traffic load,
etc. For example, controlling the mobility of a robot [9,
10].

DISTANCE BASED CONTROLLED SINK MOBILITY (DBCSM) ALGORITHM

2

DBCSM algorithm is trying to move the sink towards a

point of the largest distance where the nodes have higher
energy levels to improve the energy distribution and lifetime of the network. DBCSM has two stages: network
construction and distance calculation and movement. In
the network construction stage, sensor nodes are located
inside a squared area in a grid fashion and the sink node
is located at the center of the network area as shown in
Fig 1.
In distance calculation and movement stage, the
distance from the sink to each node is calculated. After
finding the distance between the sink and the nodes, the
sink will move to the position of the node that was not
chosen before and that is far away from previously chosen nodes by distance (d). The value of (d) depends on
the number of nodes in the network. The operation will
be repeated periodically. The reason of choosing a large
distance to move to is that the farthest nodes will have
higher remaining energy levels than the nodes near the
sink because the nodes around the sink are always relaying the packets of the farther nodes to the sink therefore
their energy levels will be decreased much faster than the
other nodes. The operation is explained in the flowchart
shown in Fig 2.

Fig. 1. Network Construction

Fig. 3. Flwchart of IDBCSM Algorithm

5 SIMULATION RESULTS
5.1 Simulation Parameters
The simulatin is performed in NS2. The simulation Parameters are listed in table 1.
TABLE 1
SIMULATION PARAMETERS

Fig. 2. Flwchart of DBCSM Algorithm

IMPROVED DISTANCE BASED CONTROLLED

SINK MOBILITY (IDBCSM) ALGORITHM
3

IDBCSM algorithm is an improved version of

DBCSM algorithm. IDBCSM algorithm operates the same
way as DBCSM except that the sink does not receive packets
while moving. Sensor nodes stop sending packets to the sink
before it starts moving and resume sending after reaching
the sink to its new location. This improves all the network
performance metrics including network lifetime, average
energy consumption, Average throughput, packet delivery
ratio and average end-to-end delay. The operation is explained in the flowchart shown in Fig 3.

Parameter
Simulation Time
Simulation Area
Number of nodes
Routing Protocol
MAC Layer
Propagation Model
Initial Energy for Nodes
Initial Energy for Sink
Transmission Power
Receiving Power
Mobility Round
Spiral Sink Mobility
Round

Value
6000 or 8000 seconds
400 400
64, 100, 144 and 196
AODV
IEEE 802.11
Two ray ground model
3J
1000 J
14.8 mw
12.5 mw
every 400 seconds
every 74 seconds

5.2 Results and Performance Analysis

The performance of the proposed algorithms is
evaluated and compared with the static sink; random moving sink and spiral sink movement strategies in term of network lifetime, packet delivery ratio and average end-to-end
delay.
The comparison of the network lifetimes is shown
in Fig 4. Compared with static sink, all the other strategies
improve the network lifetime. DBCSM lifetime improvement over static is about 19%-67% while IDBCSM achieves
the best lifetime improvement which is about 108%-162%.
As could be noticed from the figure, the network lifetime

decreases when number of nodes increases. That is because

as the number of nodes increases, the routing load on the
nodes near the sink will be increased because nodes will
forward more packets from more number of nodes therefore, their energies will be exhausted earlier, reducing the
network lifetime.

Fig. 6. Average End-to-End Delay with Different Number of Nodes

6 CONCLUSION

Fig. 4. Network Lifetime with Different Number of Nodes

Packet delivery ratio comparison is shown in Fig 5.

The best packet delivery ratio is achieved by IDBCSM algorithm since there is a few packet loss because there is no
packet transmission during sink mobility. The least packet
delivery ratio is achieved by static because as the sinks
neighbor nodes begin to die, they will not be able to deliver
packets to the sink.
Average end to end delay is shown in Fig 6. The
smallest delay is achieved by static algorithm for 64 and 100
nodes but for 144 and 196 nodes, IDBCSM gives the smallest
delay. The highest delay is given by the spiral mobility strategy because of the frequent movements of sink causes packet losses.

In this paper, controlled sink mobility algorithms

have been introduced to improve the network lifetime of
wireless sensor networks. Since the nodes near the sink deplete their energy much faster than the other nodes through
the traffic overload, the controlled mobility aims to improve
the network lifetime by balancing the energy consumption
among the nodes. DBCSM and IDBCSM proposed algorithms are for controlling the sink mobility based on the distance. The performance of the two algorithms are evaluated
and compared with static, random and spiral sink movement techniques and it was shown that the two algorithms
extend the network lifetime by 19%-162% over static sink.
The two algorithms also improve the packet delivery ratio
by 12%-143%. IDBCSM reduces the average end-to-end delay for large number of nodes (144 and 196 nodes) by 6%8%.

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Fig. 5. Packet Delivery Ratio with Different Number of Nodes
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