Abstract
Data gathering is a focal task in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) which expends most of the sensor nodes' energy. Two factors that are considered essential in data gathering are latency and power consumption. Multi-hop data gathering approach proves that latency is minimized due to the speed of forwarding data to the base station. However, this may lead to increased power consumption and increasing the possibility of an emerging hotspot area. In contrast, data gathering based on Mobile Element (ME) proves that power consumption is minimized due to avoiding relay data in extreme schemes. However, this may increase the latency of data gathering due to the low velocity of ME. In this article, an efficient hybrid data gathering algorithm called Zonal Data Gathering based on Multi-hop and ME in WSNs (ZDG-MME) is proposed. In ZDG-MME, an intelligent data gathering is proposed, capturing the unique nature of nodes along with the node's position. In addition, it's able to forward the tailored data to the base station by segment the deployment field into two divisions. First, the inner division which is the closest to the base station reports the sensed data through multi-hop. Second, the outer division reports the data to certain nodes that locally buffer the data from affiliated sensors and await the ME for uploading. Furthermore, ZDG-MME analyzes the sensing area in a way to ensure balancing between latency and power consumption based on application requirements whilst avoiding the hotspot area. The extensive simulation clarifies the validity and effectiveness of the proposed approach in terms of mobile element tour length, data gathering latency and the total energy consumption.