Heuristic Algorithm and Cooperative Relay for Energy Efficient Data Collection with a UAV and WSN

This work presents a heuristic algorithm for optimizing the average total energy consumed by the ground-based nodes in data collection applications with an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). For each cluster of nodes, the UAV is assumed to fly over at least one of them to collect data. In advance of each flight only the positions of the nodes are known to the UAV. After flying into communication range of any of the nodes in a cluster, it receives information about the remaining energy of each node. This knowledge is then used by the UAV to find which node to fly to. Essential criteria include the average energy consumption, flight distance for visiting the network, and the life-time of the network. In order to show the robustness of the algorithm, we compare the results to the following two cases: when the UAV is always flying to node closest to the cluster center or to least energy node of each cluster, respectively. Moreover, cooperative data relay is also applied in a compatible IEEE 802.11 hierarchal network for the nodes and the UAV. The simulation results show noticeable benefits of this cooperative data relay used in data collection, particularly with respect to the energy consumption and the longevity of the whole network of nodes.