Robust Ad-hoc Sensor Routing (RASeR) protocol for mobile wireless sensor networks

T Hayes,F.H Ali

doi:10.1016/j.adhoc.2016.07.013

Abstract

Robust Ad-hoc Sensor Routing (RASeR) is a novel protocol for data routing in mobile wireless sensor networks (MWSNs). It is designed to cope with the demanding requirements of emerging technologies, which require the reliable and low-latency delivery of packets in highly mobile conditions. RASeR uses blind forwarding, which is facilitated by a novel method of gradient maintenance. The problem of maintaining a gradient field in a changing topology, without flooding, is solved by using a global time division multiple access MAC. Furthermore, it is enhanced with the additional options of a supersede mode, to aid time-critical applications, reverse flooding, to allow sink-to-sensor commands and energy saving sleep cycles to reduce power consumption. Analytical expressions are derived and verified by simulation. RASeR is compared with the state-of-the-art MWSN routing protocols, PHASeR and MACRO, as well as the MANET protocols, AODV and OLSR. The results indicate that RASeR is a high performance protocol, which shows improvements over PHASeR, MACRO, AODV and OLSR. Tested over varying levels of mobility, scalability and traffic, the simulations yield near perfect PDR in many scenarios, as well as a low end-to-end delay, high throughput, low overhead and low energy consumption. The robustness of this protocol and its consistent reliability, low latency and additional features, makes it highly suitable to a wide number of applications. It is specifically applicable to highly mobile situations with a fixed number of nodes and small payloads.

Highlights

Sensor networks are an important tool for monitoring physical phenomena in the modern world, since they often negate the need for human presence
The Packet delivery ratio (PDR) for both Robust Ad-hoc Sensor Routing (RASeR) and MACRO are near perfect, with RASeR improving on MACRO by only about 0.04%
RASeRs delay is consistently less than 5ms, which is a large improvement over PHASeR and MACRO, whose lowest delay is over 49ms

Summary

Introduction

Sensor networks are an important tool for monitoring physical phenomena in the modern world, since they often negate the need for human presence. The nodes’ ability to communicate wirelessly removes the need for long wires and enables them to be distributed in an ad-hoc manner wherever and whenever required, which could include harsh and hostile terrains [1]. For this reason, along with the availability of low cost nodes, wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are already commonplace in industry and are becoming more and prevalent in the consumer market. One of the main challenges in these mobile WSNs (MWSNs) is the routing protocol, which aims to transport the data generated by the sensors to the sink This is non-trivial due to the limited resources, such as bandwidth, power and cost, as well as the movement of nodes. The more demanding applications require the consistent delivery of real-time data in highly mobile scenarios, which necessitates a robust, high performance routing protocol

Results

Discussion

Conclusion