Efficient Dispatch of Multi-Capability Mobile Sensors in Hybrid Wireless Sensor Networks

We consider a hybrid wireless sensor network consisting of static and mobile sensors, where each static sensor can detect an event of only one type while each mobile sensor can analyze events of multiple types. Static sensors monitor the environment and report where events appear in the sensing field. Then, mobile sensors are dispatched to reach these event locations to perform more in-depth analysis. An interesting problem is how to schedule mobile sensors’ traveling paths so that their lifetime can be maximized. We thus formulate a multi-round multi-capability sensor dispatch problem, which is shown to be NP-hard. Through an economic viewpoint, we develop a heuristic using the Pareto optimality to solve this problem. Simulation results have verified the effectiveness of the proposed heuristic. The paper contributes in defining a new sensor dispatch problem and proposing efficient solution to it.