Acta Informatica Pragensia, 2016, 5(1): 46–55 DOI: 10.18267/j.aip.84 Peer-reviewed paper 46 ACTA INFORMATICA PRAGENSIA Volume 05 | Number 01 | 2016 Conceptual Agent-Based Model for Optimal Power Utilization in Wireless Sensor Networks Olumide S. Adewale * , Ojonukpe S. Egwuche * , Samuel A. Oluwadare * Abstract Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are densely and largely deployed in a variety of environments to sense real-world events. Many approaches have been proposed for collecting sensory data in any wireless sensor networks in a flexible, reliable, and efficient manner. In this study, we design an efficient mobile agent-based model for data gathering in wireless sensor networks to achieve energy and timely collection of sensory information in the target scene. The current focus in wireless sensor networks is placed on energy optimization during data gathering, processing and transmission. Mobile Agents (MAs) as a piece of a program have attracted growing research interest that travels the network from node to node to compute the local data to get useful information globally. Mobile agent’s features such as autonomy, social ability, learning, and more significantly, mobility makes it a chosen technology for information processing in wireless sensor networks and other resource constrained computing environments. The nodes of the sensors are modelled and represented by the states of a Markov chain. The nodes are further grouped into clusters to save the energy of the nodes farther away from the base station. Keywords: Mobile Agents, Sensor Nodes, Wireless Sensor Networks, Clustering. 1 Introduction Recent advances in wireless communications and electronics have led to the development of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs). Wireless network refers to any type of computer network that is not connected by cables of any kind. A wireless sensor network (WSN) consists of spatially distributed autonomous sensor nodes and a communication system that allows automatic data collection, processing and sharing based on the collaborative effort of a large number of sensor nodes. Sensor networks are used for collecting, storing and sharing the sensed data and to cooperatively pass their data through the network to a main location (Zhu, et al, 2012). Lange and Oshima (1999) defined mobile agent as a program that assists people and acts on their behalf on a network. An agent possesses the following properties: a. Reactive – senses changes in the environment and acts accordingly to those changes; b. Autonomous – has control over its own actions; c. Goal driven – is pro-active; d. Temporally continuous – is continuously executing; e. Communicative – able to communicate with other agents; * Computer Science Department, Federal University of Technology Akure, P.M.B. 704, Akure, Ondo State, Nigeria  osadewale@futa.edu.ng, osegwuche@futa.edu.ng, saoluwadare@futa.edu.ng