The research on mobile sink groups such as platoons in battlefields and firefights in disaster areas have been actively studied as a challenged and interesting issue in wireless sensor networks. For supporting mobile sink groups, the formation of effective data storage is one of the important design factors for energy-efficient and reliable data delivery to them by considering their mobility. Various data storage schemes have been proposed for mobile sink groups and they are usually categorized into two approaches: a point-based storage one and an area-based storage one. The point-based storage approach is very efficient when a mobile sink group has a small number of member sinks or it has a large-scale group region. On the other hand, the area-based storage approach only when a mobile sink group has a large number of member sink and it has a small-scale group region. In other words, these two approaches are suitable only for special cases of mobile sinks groups. Thus, this paper proposes a Virtual Tube Storage (VTS) scheme for efficiently supporting general cases of mobile sink groups in wireless sensor networks. We first present design principles of data storage and data dissemination. Then, we describe the method to efficiently construct a virtual tube storage based on the design principle of data storage. Next, we describe the process to disseminate data from a source node to a mobile sink group via the virtual tube storage based on the design principle of data dissemination. Simulation results verify that the proposed scheme achieves better performance than the existing point-based storage and area-based storage schemes in terms of energy-efficiency and reliable data dissemination.

作为无线传感器网络中一个充满挑战和有趣的问题，已经积极研究了有关移动接收器组的研究，例如战场上的排和灾区的消防。为了支持移动接收器组，有效的数据存储的形成是考虑到其移动性的节能高效数据传输的重要设计因素之一。已经针对移动宿组提出了各种数据存储方案，并且它们通常被分为两种方法：基于点的存储方案和基于区域的存储方案。当移动接收器组具有少量成员接收器或具有大型组区域时，基于点的存储方法将非常有效。另一方面，仅当移动接收器组具有大量成员接收器并且具有小规模的组区域时，才使用基于区域的存储方法。换句话说，这两种方法仅适用于移动接收器组的特殊情况。因此，本文提出了一种虚拟管存储（VTS）方案，以有效地支持无线传感器网络中移动宿组的一般情况。我们首先介绍数据存储和数据分发的设计原理。然后，我们根据数据存储的设计原理，描述了一种有效构建虚拟管存储的方法。接下来，我们将基于数据分发的设计原理，描述通过虚拟管存储将数据从源节点分发到移动宿组的过程。