A Simulation Framework for Energy-Aware Wireless Sensor Network Protocols

Abstract

We discuss a modular simulation framework to investigate the energy efficiency of different routing protocols used in resource constrained wireless sensor networks. Our simulation framework provides a flexible tool to build diverse protocols by combining existing building blocks at different layers and to analyse how several factors such as routing strategies, MAC protocols, link and node failures, energy on path, network topology changes, in-network processing, scheduling at MAC layer and other adjustable configuration parameters influence the energy efficiency of the protocol. The simulator extends the open source OMNeT++ and its Mo- bility Framework and provides a framework to rapidly develop, to experiment with and to evaluate efficiently routing protocols; the quantitative effort to design new routing protocols and to integrate them into a complete protocol stack is considerably reduced. Moreover, we develop complete modules for MAC and network protocols; in order to study and evaluate the behavior and lifetime of the network we implement independent energy and statistics modules. We provide also new features such as add/delete, move, dis/reconnect nodes during simulation, which allow to analyse the impact of dynamic topology changes. Index Terms—energy-aware, simulation, WSN protocols We first need energy-aware routing protocols which should take into account new metrics based on a sensor node's residual energy or other attributes to be able to take appropriate routing decisions in order to extend the lifetime of the WSN. Moreover, for a resource constrained sensor node it is very important that also the protocol stack operates efficiently and all the layers making up the protocol stack are optimized toward the specific requirements of the application running on top of it. In particular, the energy consumption must be optimized at each layer and the cooperation between layers should be improved. In order to achieve this, we proposed in (1) a modular, energy-aware network stack architecture of a sensor node as a flexible approach to design and plug-and- play various protocols at network and MAC layers, and to combine and analyse the impact of different strategies (inside the protocols) on performance and lifetime of the WSN. A. Motivation and objectives