Abstract: | Network performance can be improved by using a mobile sink (MS) to collect sensed data in a wireless sensor network. In this paper, we design an efficient trajectory for MS, collecting data from sensor nodes in a multihop fashion, with the aim of prolonging the network lifetime. Considering event‐driven applications, we present an approach to jointly determine the optimal trajectory for MS and data paths and transmission rates from source nodes to MS, without considering any rendezvous points. In these applications, an MS is supposed to harvest the data from source nodes in a given time‐slot. We first show that this problem is in form of a mixed integer nonlinear programming model, which is NP‐hard. Then, to achieve an approximate solution, we divide the mentioned problem into 2 simple subproblems. In fact, after determining an approximate zone for the trajectory of MS, the optimal data paths and transmission rates from source nodes to the MS are obtained through a mathematical optimization model. Finally, to illustrate the efficiency of the proposed approach, we compare the performance of our algorithm to an rendezvous point–based and also the state‐of‐the‐art approach in different scenarios. |