Evaluation of Clustering and Multi-hop Routing Protocols in Mobile Ad-hoc Sensor Networks

Mobile ad-hoc sensor networks (MASNETs) have promised a wide variety of applications such as military sensor networks to detect and gain as much as possible about enemy movements and explosions. Most of these applications can be deployed either in static or mobile environment. In static WSNs, the change of sensor nodes topology is normally caused by node failure which is due to energy depletion. However, in MASNETs, the main reason of the topology change is caused by the node movement. Since the sensor nodes are limited in power supply and have a low radio frequency coverage, they are easily losing their connection with neighbours and difficult to transmit their packets towards sink node. The reconnection process from one node to another node consumes more energy that related to control packets. One of the techniques to conserve more energy is through topology management using clustering network. A HEED (Hybrid, Energy-Efficient, Distributed) is one of the clustering algorithm for sensor networks. In HEED, a node is elected to become a cluster head based on its residual energy and its communication cost in its neighbourhood. HEED clusters the network in a constant number of iterations, elects cluster heads that are well-distributed in the network, and incurs low message and communication overhead. In this research work, through extensive simulation we evaluated the capability of HEED on how far it can react to network topology change in MASNETs by comparing its performance with Surge multihop routing protocol in both static and mobile environment. We investigated the performance of both HEED and Surge in terms of the average percentage of packet loss and the average total energy consumption with various simulation times. From the detailed simulation results and analysis, HEED performs better than Surge in term of energy consumption in static network, but not performs as expected in mobile environment

Overlapping Multi-hop Clustering for Wireless Sensor Networks

Clustering is a standard approach for achieving efficient and scalable performance in wireless sensor networks. Traditionally, clustering algorithms aim at generating a number of disjoint clusters that satisfy some criteria. In this paper, we formulate a novel clustering problem that aims at generating overlapping multi-hop clusters. Overlapping clusters are useful in many sensor network applications, including inter-cluster routing, node localization, and time synchronization protocols. We also propose a randomized, distributed multi-hop clustering algorithm (KOCA) for solving the overlapping clustering problem. KOCA aims at generating connected overlapping clusters that cover the entire sensor network with a specific average overlapping degree. Through analysis and simulation experiments we show how to select the different values of the parameters to achieve the clustering process objectives. Moreover, the results show that KOCA produces approximately equal-sized clusters, which allows distributing the load evenly over different clusters. In addition, KOCA is scalable; the clustering formation terminates in a constant time regardless of the network size

Routing efficiency in wireless sensor-actor networks considering semi-automated architecture

Wireless networks have become increasingly popular and advances in wireless communications and electronics have enabled the development of different kind of networks such as Mobile Ad-hoc Networks (MANETs), Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) and Wireless Sensor-Actor Networks (WSANs). These networks have different kind of characteristics, therefore new protocols that fit their features should be developed. We have developed a simulation system to test MANETs, WSNs and WSANs. In this paper, we consider the performance behavior of two protocols: AODV and DSR using TwoRayGround model and Shadowing model for lattice and random topologies. We study the routing efficiency and compare the performance of two protocols for different scenarios. By computer simulations, we found that for large number of nodes when we used TwoRayGround model and random topology, the DSR protocol has a better performance. However, when the transmission rate is higher, the routing efficiency parameter is unstable.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Proactive Highly Ambulatory Sensor Routing (PHASeR) protocol for mobile wireless sensor networks

This paper presents a novel multihop routing protocol for mobile wireless sensor networks called PHASeR (Proactive Highly Ambulatory Sensor Routing). The proposed protocol uses a simple hop-count metric to enable the dynamic and robust routing of data towards the sink in mobile environments. It is motivated by the application of radiation mapping by unmanned vehicles, which requires the reliable and timely delivery of regular measurements to the sink. PHASeR maintains a gradient metric in mobile environments by using a global TDMA MAC layer. It also uses the technique of blind forwarding to pass messages through the network in a multipath manner. PHASeR is analysed mathematically based on packet delivery ratio, average packet delay, throughput and overhead. It is then simulated with varying mobility, scalability and traffic loads. The protocol gives good results over all measures, which suggests that it may also be suitable for a wider array of emerging applications