Multiple controlled mobile elements (data mules) for data collection in sensor networks

Recent research has shown that using a mobile element to collect and carry data mechanically from a sensor network has many advantages over static multihop routing. We have an implementation as well employing a single mobile element. But the network scalability and traffic may make a single mobile element insufficient. In this paper we investigate the use of multiple mobile elements. In particular, we present load balancing algorithm which tries to balance the number of sensor nodes each mobile element services. We show by simulation the benefits of load balancing.