CBID: A Scalable Method for Distributed Data Aggregation in WSNs

Mobile Agent (MA) technology has been recently proposed in Wireless Sensors Networks (WSNs) literature to answer the scalability problem of client/server model in data fusion applications. Herein we present CBID, a novel algorithm that calculates near-optimal routes for MAs that incrementally fuse the data as they visit the Sensor Nodes (SNs) while also enabling fast updates on the designed itineraries upon changes of network topology. CBID dispatches in parallel a number of MAs that sequentially visit sensor nodes arranged in tree structures and upon visiting an SN with two or more child SNs, the MAs (master MAs) clone of themselves with each clone (slave MA) visiting a tree branch. When all slave MAs return to that SN, they deliver their collected data to the master MA and are then disposed of. This results in a significant reduction of the overall energy expenditure and response time. Simulation results prove the high effectiveness of CBID in data fusion tasks compared to other alternative algorithms