Location aware sensor routing protocol for mobile wireless sensor networks

Abstract

Location aware sensor routing (LASeR) protocol is a novel solution to the challenges of routing in mobile wireless sensor networks (MWSNs). It addresses the high reliability and low latency requirements of emerging applications. The protocol uses location information to maintain a gradient field even in highly mobile environments, whilst reducing the routing overhead. This allows the protocol to utilise a blind forwarding technique to propagate packets towards the sink. The protocol inherently utilises multiple paths simultaneously to create route diversity and increase its robustness. LASeR is designed for use in a high variety of MWSN applications with autonomous land, sea or air vehicles. Analytical expressions are derived and evaluated against the simulations. Extensive modelling and simulation of the proposed routing protocol has shown it to be highly adaptable and robust. It is compared with the recent MWSN proactive highly ambulatory sensor routing protocol, the high performance mobility adaptive cross‐layer routing protocol, as well as ad‐hoc on‐demand distance vector and optimised link state routing. Protocols are evaluated on packet delivery ratio, end‐to‐end delay, overhead, throughput and energy consumption. The results highlight both the high performance of LASeR in various challenging environments and its superiority over the state‐of‐the‐art.