Probabilistic Location-based Routing Protocol for Mobile Wireless Sensor Networks with Intermittent Communication

In a sensor network, sensor data messages reach the nearest stationary sink node connected to the Internet by wireless multihop transmissions. Recently, various mobile sensors are available due to advances of robotics technologies and communication technologies. A location based message-by-message routing protocol, such as Geographic Distance Routing (GEDIR) is suitable for such mobile wireless networks; however, it is required for each mobile wireless sensor node to know the current locations of all its neighbor nodes. On the other hand, various intermittent communication methods for a low power consumption requirement have been proposed for wireless sensor networks. Intermittent Receiver-driven Data Transmission (IRDT) is one of the most efficient methods; however, it is difficult to combine the location based routing and the intermittent communication. In order to solve this problem, this paper proposes a probabilistic approach IRDT-GEDIR with the help of one of the solutions of the secretaries problem. Here, each time a neighbor sensor node wakes up from its sleep mode, an intermediate sensor node determines whether it forwards its buffered sensor data messages to it or not based on an estimation of achieved pseudo speed of the messages. Simulation experiments show that IRDT-GEDIR achieves higher pseudo speed of sensor data message transmissions and shorter transmission delay than achieves shorter transmission delay than the two naive combinations of IRDT and GEDIR in sensor networks with mobile sensor nodes and a stationary sink node. In addition, the guideline of the estimated numbers of the neighbor nodes of each intermediate sensor node is provided based on the results of the simulation experiments to apply the probabilistic approach IRDT-GEDIR. Copyright © 2015 IFSA Publishing, S. L.