"Sensor Networks with Multiple Mobile Access Points" P. Venkitasubramaniam, Q. Zhao and L. Tong 38th Annual Conference on Information Systems and Sciences, Princeton, NJ, March 2004.
We consider sensor networks with mobile access points where data at sensor nodes are collected by multiple mobile access points. Using throughput and energy efficiency as performance measures, we address the optimal coverage areas of and the cooperation among the mobile access points. We show that when the mobile access points do not cooperate in demodulation, disjoint coverage areas are optimal for throughput while completely overlapped coverage areas are optimal for energy efficiency. When the mobile access points
decode their received packets jointly, the optimal configuration appears to have a phase transition. Specifically, in order to
maximize throughput, the coverage areas of the mobile access points should be completely overlapped when SNR is smaller than a threshold and disjoint otherwise.