| Abstract: | Since unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have been introduced as mobile nodes for data gathering, wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have progressed considerably. The resulting WSN‐UAV systems are employed for emergency applications and also for remote monitoring purposes. WSN‐UAV systems yield an optimum data gathering method using the WSN. In the proposed method, the nodes' data are transferred using a remotely operated vehicle (drone) rather than the conventional data transferring methods like the direct and hop‐to‐hop data transmission approaches. Then, the gathered data are delivered in the pre‐determined destination point. WSN‐UAV systems, in fact, are a special case of the systems with the mobile sink in which the sink path is previously specified and controlled. In this paper, the effects of clustering parameters on the WSNs are studied; then, the network's lifetime is prolonged by applying some parameters. In addition, the network's performance is enhanced to some extent by assigning some changes in the media access control (MAC) layer. Also, the effect of drone's path pattern on the lifetime of the network is studied. |
