Wireless sensor network clustering for UAV-based data gathering

With the ongoing system miniaturization, sensors capabilities and cost reduction, a new opportunities are created to accomplish data reduction and sensors fusion on small systems. This is the case for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles and the interest that they generate in applying this technology in remote sensing and data gathering in a wide wireless network. In another hand, it is clear that the use of mobile robots in a such network reduces the energy consumption for the static nodes, while forwarding data to a sink node and therefore extends the lifetime of the network. In this paper we attempt to demonstrate the advantage of integrating small scale drone in a terrestrial wireless sensor network, for environmental monitoring and data gathering.