An enhanced real-time routing protocol with load distribution for mobile wireless sensor networks

Abstract

Mobile wireless sensor network (MWSN) is a wireless ad hoc network that consists of a very large number of tiny sensor nodes communicating with each other in which sensor nodes are either equipped with motors for active mobility or attached to mobile objects for passive mobility. A real-time routing protocol for MWSN is an exciting area of research because messages in the network are delivered according to their end-to-end deadlines (packet lifetime) while sensor nodes are mobile. This paper proposes an enhanced real-time with load distribution (ERTLD) routing protocol for MWSN which is based on our previous routing protocol RTLD. ERTLD utilized corona mechanism and optimal forwarding metrics to forward the data packet in MWSN. It computes the optimal forwarding node based on RSSI, remaining battery level of sensor nodes and packet delay over one-hop. ERTLD ensures high packet delivery ratio and experiences minimum end-to-end delay in WSN and MWSN compared to baseline routing protocol. In this paper we consider a highly dynamic wireless sensor network system in which the sensor nodes and the base station (sink) are mobile. ERTLD has been successfully studied and verified through simulation experiment.