A Novel Efficient Data Gathering Algorithm for Disconnected Sensor Networks Based on Mobile Edge Computing

Employing mobile elements is an efficient solution to the performance improvement of wireless sensor networks (WSNs). We propose an efficient data gathering mechanism for disconnected WSNs with rendezvous points (DGM-RPs). The mobile sink traverses the entire network and stops only at the rendezvous points (RPs) while gathers the data from sensors in every disconnected segment. In this paper, mobile sinks perform the task of edge computing and alleviate the load of upper cloud. We measure the shape of disconnected segments, layering them by use of the convex hull, and then design the travelling path of the mobile sink to minimize the travel latency to visit all disconnected segments. At least one RPs will be selected in a segment firstly, and then, on this basis, we consider the distribution density of sensor nodes and the location of the RPs already exist to adding new RPs, which make good use of the margin to reducing the energy consumption and prolong the network lifetime.