Multi-criteria Analysis to Select Relay Nodes in the ORST Technique

Abstract

Cooperative diversity techniques are being used to improve the communication reliability in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN). Typically, these techniques use relay nodes to retransmit messages that otherwise would not be heard by their destination nodes. Thus, the relay selection techniques are fundamental to improve WSN’s communication behavior. However, to perform the adequate relay selection, it is necessary to identify which are the most relevant parameters for the operation of the network and analyze their impact when used in the relay selection, that is, it is necessary to define which are the best parameters to use as selection criteria. In this context, this paper performs an analysis of the impact of each of the parameters used to perform the relay selection in the Optimized Relay Selection Technique (ORST). This analysis was assessed by simulation using the OMNeT++ tool and the WSN framework Castalia. It was considered a set of parameters, aiming to identify their relevance and possibly optimize the objective function used in this technique. Simulation results show that the objective function can be optimized considering a small number of parameters to perform the relay selection.