Abstract:The delay tolerant mobile sensor network (DTMSN) is a type of sensor network used for pervasive information gathering. DTMSN distinguishes itself from conventional sensor networks by several unique characteristics such as sensor mobility, loose connectivity, and delay tolerability. Therefore, traditional data gathering methods cannot be applied. In this paper, a novel data gathering method named relative distance-aware data delivery scheme (RDAD) is proposed. RDAD introduces a simple non-GPS method with small overhead to gain the relative distance from a node to sink and then to calculate the node delivery probability which gives a guidance to message transmission. RDAD also employs the message survival time and message maximal replication to decide message’s transmission and dropping for minimizing transmission overhead. Simulation results have shown that the proposed RDAD data delivery scheme does not only achieve a relatively long network lifetime but also get the higher message delivery ratio with lower transmission overhead and data delivery delay than other DTMSN data delivering approaches.