202 IEEE COMMUNICATIONS LETTERS, VOL. 14, NO.

3, MARCH 2010

Novel Strategy for Data Dissemination to Mobile Sink Groups in

Wireless Sensor Networks
Soochang Park, Euisin Lee, Min-Sook Jin, and Sang-Ha Kim, Member, IEEE

Abstract—In wireless sensor networks, studies in terms of data moves around the sensor field, the inefficient data collection
dissemination to individual mobile sinks traditionally rely on a problem could more terribly happen via the foot-print chaining
strategy that consists of a virtual infrastructure to service current trajectory according to both collective and random movement
location of the sinks and per-sink foot-print chaining to support
local mobility after location update. To adapt the strategy for of the representative. The second problem is the intra-group
supporting mobile sink groups, it might be simply considered to location update problem that is also caused by the random
use a representative per a sink group in order to representatively movement within range of the sink group. Although other
update location and representatively make a foot-print chain. member sinks are still located at either radio range of a sensor
However, it may lead to considerable problems with respect node to make the foot-print chain of the representative or
to efficiency and robustness for data dissemination: inefficient
data collection problem, intra-group location update problem, threshold range for location re-update, if the representative
and relay path loss problem. In this letter, we propose a novel moves around out of the radio range or the threshold range,
strategy for data dissemination decoupled with any member sink either the foot-print chaining or the location re-update might
of a mobile sink group. In order to independently deal with a be unnecessarily performed. Finally, when the representative
mobile sink group, the strategy is composed of three mechanisms: is located in a void area but other member sinks are located
representative location update, distributed data collection, and
per-group foot-print chaining. out of the void area, the per-representative foot-print chaining
is not able to be performed any more although other member
Index Terms—Data dissemination, group mobile sinks.
sinks can continually carry out foot-print chaining for the sink
group. This problem is denoted by the relay path loss problem.
I. I NTRODUCTION These problems are caused from dependency between the
N practical wireless sensor networks, there could be two group and one member sink, i.e. the representative. In this
I types of mobile sinks: 1) individual mobile sinks, e.g. a
scout and a sniper, and 2) groups of mobile sinks, e.g. a platoon
letter, we propose a novel strategy for data dissemination
decoupled with any member sink of a mobile sink group,
of soldiers and a squad of firefighters. To the individual mobile called C-SGM (Cluster-based Sink Group Management). For
sinks, data dissemination is one of well-known and most active independently managing a mobile sink group, the strategy
research topics. There have been proposed data dissemination is composed of three mechanisms: representative location
schemes to support the individual mobile sink in many papers update, distributed data collection, and per-group foot-print
[1]-[4]. The schemes typically rely on a strategy that consists chaining.
of a virtual infrastructure to service current location of the
sinks and per-sink foot-print chaining to support local mobility II. C LUSTER -BASED S INK G ROUP M ANAGEMENT
after location update. To adapt the strategy to supporting
mobile sink groups, it might be able to be simply considered to The virtual infrastructure seriously affects capability of
exploit a representative per a group in order to representatively data dissemination [1]. For the efficient design of the virtual
update location of the sink group and representatively chain infrastructure, C-SGM takes into account both a cluster-based
the foot-print of the representative as movement trajectory of virtual infrastructure (CVI) independent of sinks/source nodes
the sink group. However, it could cause considerable problems and inter-cluster communication via geographic routing with
with respect to efficiency and robustness of data dissemination. recursive location search for reduction of structure construc-
The first problem is inefficient data collection via detour tion overhead and routing state maintenance overhead. The
paths. The inefficient data collection problem might occur three mechanisms of C-SGM rely on the virtual infrastructure.
since data is gathered via only a member sink coupled with the
sink group, i.e. the representative, although data is able to be A. Cluster-based Virtual Infrastructure
collected via other member sinks with shorter paths. Moreover,
This letter assumes that all sensor nodes are aware of a
since the representative may randomly move around within
minimum bounding box of the geographic field in which are
range of the sink group even when the sink group collectively
deployed, denoted by F, and their own locations. Then, the
Manuscript received October 10, 2009. The associate editor coordinating coarse-grained grid is simply constructed by a reference point
the review of this letter and approving it for publication was F.-N. Pavlidou. and cell size � of the coarse-grained grid, which are set as
S. Park, E. Lee, and M.-S. Jin are with the Department of Computer
Engineering, Chungnam National University, Republic of Korea (e-mail: system parameters at the network initialization stage. The field
{winter, eslee, badamul}@cclab.cnu.ac.kr). F is divided into coarse-grained grids as shown in Fig. 1.
S.-H. Kim (corresponding author) is with the Department of Computer Every grid has own coordinates, denoted by ����� ; a sensor
Engineering, Chungnam National University, Republic of Korea (e-mail:
shkim@cnu.ac.kr). node is able to calculate its coordinates ����� (a, b) from its
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/LCOMM.2010.03.092001 location (x, y) as: a = [�-�0 / �] and b = [�-�0 / �] where
c 2010 IEEE
1089-7798/10$25.00 ⃝

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PARK et al.: NOVEL STRATEGY FOR DATA DISSEMINATION TO MOBILE SINK GROUPS IN WIRELESS SENSOR NETWORKS 203

Global Location
Update with (3,3)

Access Header Location

(3,3) Node Header
{(xc, yc) o (xh, yh)}

Center (xc, yc)

Header

(xh, yh)
Center

Fig. 2. Inter-cluster communication by using the recursive location search.

D
(0,0) Source performed without actual location information of the header
Reference Point (x0, y0)
nodes. When a header node �1 sends data to a neighbor
Fig. 1. Coarse-grained grid based clusters, access nodes of a mobile sink header node �2 , the data is encapsulated with center (�� ,
group, and global location update to cluster headers via a header node. �� ) of the neighbor cluster as destination location and it is
delivered in general geographic routing within region in the
cluster of �1 . When sensor nodes within region in the cluster
(�0 , �0 ) is the location of the reference point. For simplicity, of �2 receive the data, since the sensor nodes have already
this letter assumes that all the ����� are positive. maintained actual location (�ℎ , �ℎ ) of �2 , the sensor nodes
Every coarse-grained grid has own header. To allocate the deliver the data to �2 by geographic routing with recursively
header, a sensor node located at (x, y) in a coarse-grained grid location search. By the routine, when every header node re-
����� (a, b) exploits a backward timer derived via (1). ceives the global location update, every header node maintains
⌊ ⌋ location of the representative header node. Actually, location
2� of the representative header node is merely the coordinates of
, (1)
� × ��������� the cluster where the header node belongs to as (3, 3) shown
where ��������� denotes the amount of residual energy of the in Fig. 1.
sensor node; R denotes the range of the sensor node location To ensure distributive data collection, C-SGM gathers data
from the center point of the ����� (a, b). from all source nodes via the cluster-level shortest paths by
After the timer expires, the sensor node tries to perform data delivery among header nodes toward the representative
restricted flooding of a message with its location (x, y), header node. Also, C-SGM can collect the data via all access
denoted by header advertisement, only within the area of nodes. When a source node generates data, the source node
the ����� (a, b). If the node has already received the header sends the data to the header node of its own cluster. The
advertisement from another node, it retracts the own advertise- header node delivers the data to the header node of the nearest
ment and it saves location information of the header node. If neighborhood cluster toward the representative header node.
duplicated header advertisement from different sensor nodes If a header node receives the data and the header node has
are performed, all sensor nodes within ����� (a, b) elect the the access nodes, the header node sends the data to the access
sensor node who has the least R. If the different sensor nodes nodes and then the header node does not send to the header
have the same value to R, the sensor node who has the lowest node of neighborhood cluster any more. Hence, C-SGM can
node identifier number of them wins the election. The header distributively get the data via almost the shortest paths.
node could be rotated to evenly consume battery power of Finally, to adopt the per-group foot-print chaining C-SGM
all sensor nodes within the cluster. If battery of the header exploits per-cluster foot-print chaining. If at least a member
node is decreased until a threshold, it announces header node sink of a mobile sink group is located in a cluster and thus still
reselection within its own cluster. communicates with its own access node, the registration still
is preserved. When the other member sinks of the sink group
move in region of new clusters, the sink group carries out the
B. Representative Location Update, Distributed Data Collec- location registration to the header nodes of the new clusters. In
tion, and Per-cluster Foot-print Chaining addition, by the time all member sinks of the sink group move
In C-SGM, a mobile sink group selects access nodes in all around out of bound of the cluster where the representative
clusters where it is attached and an access node can be shared header node belongs to, if a header node have registration
with member sinks in radio range of the access node. The from the sink group and the header node is located in one of
access nodes register their own locations to header nodes of the neighborhoods clusters of the cluster, the header node makes
clusters. Then, only one of the header nodes representatively the foot-print chain toward the header node of the cluster.
performs global location update to every header node in the
virtual infrastructure. The global location update is fulfilled III. E XPERIMENTAL R ESULTS
through the geographic routing with the recursive location In this section, we compare the performance of C-SGM
search among header nodes. Fig. 2 illustrates an instance with that of two other schemes that construct independent
of inter-cluster communication via the geographic routing virtual infrastructures: 1) a CVI based scheme and 2) LBDD
with the recursive location search by which communication [4]. Since there is not any group mobility support scheme in
between a header node and its neighbor header node can be wireless sensor networks, we simply exploit the two schemes

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204 IEEE COMMUNICATIONS LETTERS, VOL. 14, NO. 3, MARCH 2010

7000
C-SGM
Total Amount of Energy Consumption (mW) CVI with Representative
1.0
1.0
6000
LBDD with Representative

Average Data Delivery Ratio

0.8

Average Data Delivery Ratio

5000 0.8

4000 0.6
0.6

3000
0.4 C-SGM 0.4
2000 CVI with Representative
LBDD with Representative
0.2 0.2 C-SGM
1000 CVI with Representative
LBDD with Representative

0 0.0 0.0
0 5000 10000 15000 20000 25000 30000 10 20 30 40 50 60 0 2500 5000 7500 10000 12500 15000

Simulation Time (ms) The Number of Source Nodes Simulation Time (ms)

Fig. 3. Total amount of energy consumption Fig. 4. Data delivery ratio when the number of Fig. 5. Data delivery ratio when a hole exists as
according to simulation time. source nodes is changed. a void area.

with the representative. The three schemes are implemented LBDD. CVI and LBDD rely on the representative manner so
in QualNet v4.0 simulator [5]. The simulation network space that they frequently change the first access node and make
consists of 900 sensor nodes which are deployed uniformly the too long foot-print chain. Since it might lead to data loss
in a 100m × 100m square area. The radio range of each and data collision on the chain, data delivery ratio of them
sensor node is 10m and every member sink of a sink group is decreased. Moreover, the increase of the number of source
is located within 1m from each other. Initially, for simulation, nodes more seriously causes the data loss and collision.
the number of member sinks in a sink group is 20; the number In addition, we compare robustness when a void area exists.
of source node is 20; and the collective movement speed We make a hole with 20m × 20m at center of the simulation
of a sink group is 15m/s. Transmitting and receiving power space, and then a sink group moves across the hole at 7000ms.
consumption rates of the sensor nodes are 21mW and 15mW, Fig. 5 shows measured data delivery ratio. At the 7000ms, CVI
respectively. The parameters are chosen in reference the MICA and LBDD cannot gather any data until moving out of the hole
specification [6]. since they merely gather data via the representative although
other member sinks are located out of the hole. On the other
A. Energy Efficiency hand, C-SGM can still collect data even though the sink group
We first measure the total amount of energy consumption is moving across the hole because C-SGM is able to gather
according to simulation time when every source node sends data via other member sinks.
data every 100ms. As shown in Fig. 3, LBDD consumes lower
energy than the others; however, the total amount of energy IV. C ONCLUSION
consumption of LBDD is fluctuated. This is because, after In this letter, we propose a strategy for data dissemination
registration of first location LBDD gathers all data from all scheme to mobile sink groups, called C-SGM (Cluster-based
source nodes only via the foot-print chaining and LBDD does Sink Group Management). In C-SGM, all member sinks of
not exploit any scheme for the even energy consumption. So, a mobile sink group make connection to the cluster-based
LBDD especially dissipates large amount of battery power of virtual infrastructure to distributively collect data via short
sensor nodes near the representative. In case of CVI, header paths but only one member sink updates location; and the
nodes are able to be rotated to balance energy consumption so per-cluster foot-print chaining is performed instead of the foot-
that network lifetime of CVI is slowly ended after 22,000ms. print chaining per each mobile sink or a representative.
However, since CVI exploits the global location update to all
header nodes and the representative, it leads to much frequent R EFERENCES
re-update and foot-print chaining. Thus, CVI wastes larger
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