Self-healing antchain for increasing lifespan in wireless sensor networks

Abstract

A Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) consists of a large number of randomly deployed sensor nodes. These sensor nodes organize themselves into a cooperative network and perform the three basic functions of sensing, computations and communications.This paper proposes a flat-routing technique for such a network consisting of homogenous nodes. It is an energy-efficient data gathering protocol where sensor nodes in the network form an Antchain. The role of Antchain head and Antchain tail for each data gathering process is scheduled by means of a Time Division Multiple Access technique which ensures uniform depletion of energy among sensor nodes. The real advantage comes to light in the event of the death of a node. The proposed algorithm heals the network in such a way that only one node communicates with the base station at the end of the data gathering process. Simulation results indicate that Self-Healing AntChain performs better than other AntChain systems in terms of network lifetime, average energy consumed and aggregated data delivery ratio, in addition to being a highly fault-tolerant, flexible and adaptive system.