Connectivity-based Cross-Layer Opportunistic Forwarding for MWSNs

Abstract

ABSTRACTMobile wireless sensor networks (MWSNs) consist of many sensor nodes that are randomly distributed in the environment to gather information. In MWSNs, the transmission path is affected due to node mobility and node failures. Routing protocols in MWSNs must adjust to topology changes and should determine the path with minimum overheads. Some of the existing works on the opportunistic routing minimize the energy consumption, but have large overheads and duplicate packet transmissions. In this paper, we have designed and implemented a connectivity-based cross-layer opportunistic forwarding protocol for mobile wireless sensor networks. We estimate the expected energy consumption cost for forwarding the data using prioritized forwarder list and node's connectivity metric. Connectivity metric signifies the ability of node to partition the network on its failure. To reduce retransmissions, we implement forwarding agreement mechanism among the nodes in the forwarder list, if the desired relay node has moved or failed. Our analysis shows that our protocol consumes less energy compared to conventional routing protocols. Simulation results for our protocol are compared with Energy Efficient Opportunistic Routing (EEOR), Destination Sequenced Distance Vector and ad hoc on-demand multipath distance vector protocol for energy efficiency, overheads, and packet loss. Our protocol exhibits 22% improvement in energy consumption compared to energy efficient opportunistic routing (EEOR) and also significant improvements for other performance parameters.