Fish bone structure based data aggregation and routing in wireless sensor network: multi-agent based approach

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are constrained by limited node (device) energy, low network bandwidth, high communication overhead and latency. Data aggregation alleviates the constraints of WSN. In this paper, we propose a multi-agent based homogeneous temporal data aggregation and routing scheme based on fish bone structure of WSN nodes by employing a set of static and mobile agents. The primary components of fishbone structure are backbone and ribs connected to both sides of a backbone. A backbone connects a sink node and one of the sensor nodes on the boundary of WSN through intermediate sensor nodes. Our aggregation scheme operates in the following steps. (1) Backbone creation and identifying master centers (or nodes) on it by using a mobile agent based on parameters such as Euclidean distance, residual energy, backbone angle and connectivity. (2) Selection of local centers (or nodes) along the rib of a backbone connecting a master center by using a mobile agent. (3) Local aggregation process at local centers by considering nodes along and besides the rib, and delivering to a connected master center. (4) Master aggregation process along the backbone from boundary sensor node to the sink node by using a mobile agent generated by a boundary sensor node. The mobile agent aggregates data at visited master centers and delivers to the sink node. (5) Maintenance of fish bone structure of WSN nodes. The performance of the scheme is simulated in various WSN scenarios to evaluate the effectiveness of the approach by analyzing the performance parameters such as master center selection time, local center selection time, aggregation time, aggregation ratio, number of local and master centers involved in the aggregation process, number of isolated nodes, network lifetime and aggregation energy. We observed that our scheme outperforms zonal based aggregation scheme.