Particle swarm optimization based clustering algorithm with mobile sink for WSNs

Wireless sensor networks with fixed sink node often suffer from hot spots problem since sensor nodes close to the sink usually have more traffic burden to forward during transmission process. Utilizing mobile sink has been shown as an effective technique to enhance the network performance such as energy efficiency, network lifetime, and latency, etc. In this paper, we propose a particle swarm optimization based clustering algorithm with mobile sink for wireless sensor network. In this algorithm, the virtual clustering technique is performed during routing process which makes use of the particle swarm optimization algorithm. The residual energy and position of the nodes are the primary parameters to select cluster head. The control strategy for mobile sink to collect data from cluster head is well designed. Extensive simulation results show that the energy consumption is much reduced, the network lifetime is prolonged, and the transmission delay is reduced in our proposed routing algorithm than some other popular routing algorithms.