Extending network life by using mobile actors in cluster-based wireless sensor and actor networks

Wireless sensor actor networks (WSANs) consist of a large number of resourceconstrained nodes (sensors) and a small number of powerful resource rich nodes (actors). This paper investigates the case where sensors are organized into clusters and mobile actors are used for maintaining an energy efficient topology by periodically manipulating their geographical position. We present an elegant technique that allows actor nodes to find an optimal geographical location with respect to their associated cluster heads such that the overall energy consumption is minimized. The simulation results demonstrate that the technique proposed in this paper significantly minimizes energy consumption and extends the network lifetime compared with traditional cluster-based WSN deployments.