Energy-efficient Routing for Mobile Agents in Wireless Sensor Networks

In wireless sensor networks, data fusion (in-network processing) is a critical issue because sensor networks are energy-constrained and bandwidth-constrained. Recently, a new scheme based on mobile agent has been proposed to solve the problem. The order and number of nodes on the route traversed by a mobile agent determine the energy consumption and hence, have a significant impact on the overall performance of the whole system. Considering the limited transmission range of sensor nodes, we show that this routing problem in a multi-hop cluster can be modeled as a node-weighted traveling tourist problem (TTP). We prove that the problem is NP-complete. Then we present a new approximation algorithm to solve the problem. Simulation experiments demonstrate that the proposed heuristic is more energy-efficient than two earlier ones.