Efficient collection of sensor data in remote fields using mobile collectors

This paper proposes using a mobile collector, such as an airplane or a vehicle, to collect sensor data from remote fields. We present three different schedules for the collector: round-robin, rate-based, and min movement. The data are not immediately transmitted to the base station after being sensed but buffered at a cluster head; hence, it is important to ensure the latency is within an acceptable range. We compare the latency and the energy expended of the three schedules. We use the ns-2 network simulator to study the scenarios and illustrate conditions under which rate-based outperforms round-robin in latency, and vice-versa. The benefit of min movement is in minimizing the energy expended.