Data Collection with Multiple Sinks in Wireless Sensor Networks

In this paper, we consider Multiple-Sink Data Collection Problem in wireless sensor networks, where a large amount of data from sensor nodes need to be transmitted to one of multiple sinks. We design an approximation algorithm to minimize the latency of data collection schedule and show that it gives a constant-factor performance guarantee. We also present a heuristic algorithm based on breadth first search for this problem. Using simulation, we evaluate the performance of these two algorithms, and show that the approximation algorithm outperforms the heuristic up to 60%.