# Should I send now or send later? A decision-theoretic approach to transmission scheduling in sensor networks with mobile sinks

### Cite as:

L. Bölöni and D. Turgut. Should I send now or send later? A decision-theoretic approach to transmission scheduling in sensor networks with mobile sinks. Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing Journal (WCMC), 8(3):385–403, 2008.

### Abstract:

Mobile sinks can significantly extend the lifetime of a sensor network by eliminating the need for expensive hop-by-hop routing. However, a sensor node might not always have a mobile sink in transmission range, or the mobile sink might be so far that the data transmission would be very expensive. In the latter case, the sensor node needs to make a decision whether it should send the data now, or take the risk to wait for a more favorable occasion. Making the right decisions in this \em transmission scheduling problem has significant impact on the performance and lifetime of the node. In this paper we investigate the fundamentals of the transmission scheduling problem for sensor networks with mobile sinks. We develop a dynamic programming based optimal algorithm for the case when the mobility of the sinks is known in advance. We develop two algorithms based on a decision theoretic approach. The first algorithm uses Markov Decision Processes with states without history information, the second algorithm encodes some elements of the history into the state. Through a series of experiments, we show that the decision theoretic approaches significantly outperform naive heuristics, and can have a performance close to that of the optimal approach, without requiring an advance knowledge of the mobility.

### BibTeX:

@article{Boloni-2008-WCMC,
author = "L. B{\"o}l{\"o}ni and D. Turgut",
title = "Should {I} send now or send later? {A} decision-theoretic approach to transmission scheduling in sensor networks with mobile sinks",
journal = "Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing Journal (WCMC)",
year = "2008",
volume = "8",
number = "3",
pages = "385-403",
abstract = {
Mobile sinks can significantly extend the lifetime of a sensor
network by eliminating the need for expensive hop-by-hop routing.
However, a sensor node might not always have a mobile sink in
transmission range, or the mobile sink might be so far that the
data transmission would be very expensive. In the latter case, the
sensor node needs to make a decision whether it should send the
data now, or take the risk to wait for a more favorable occasion.
Making the right decisions in this {\em transmission scheduling
problem} has significant impact on the performance and lifetime of
the node.
In this paper we investigate the fundamentals of the transmission
scheduling problem for sensor networks with mobile sinks. We
develop a dynamic programming based optimal algorithm for the case
when the mobility of the sinks is known in advance. We develop two
algorithms based on a decision theoretic approach. The first
algorithm uses Markov Decision Processes with states without
history information, the second algorithm encodes some elements of
the history into the state. Through a series of experiments, we
show that the decision theoretic approaches significantly
outperform naive heuristics, and can have a performance close to
that of the optimal approach, without requiring an advance
knowledge of the mobility.
},
}


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