Fairness-Aware UAV-Assisted Data Collection in Mobile Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract

In this paper, we study data collection in mobile wireless sensor networks (WSNs) assisted by unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). We focus on randomly deployed mobile sensors along a predefined path with different but constant velocities, and a flying UAV in different heights to collect data from the mobile sensors. As the network topology is changing under the mobility of the UAV and the sensor nodes, the design of efficient data collection protocols is a major concern. In this paper, we propose four data collection algorithms taking into account the multi-data-rate transmissions (DR) and the contact duration time (CDT) between the sensors and the UAV. Besides, we propose a fairness metric to evaluate the algorithms. Through extensive simulations, we examine the effectiveness of the proposed algorithms under different configurations and show how the algorithm combining DR and CDT outperforms the others in terms of number of collected packets and weighted fairness.