Proposing a novel method based on network-coding for optimizing error recovery in wireless sensor networks

Abstract

In Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs), signals are used as channels for communicating data. Wireless channels are inherently insecure; hence, the vulnerability of signals to external destructive factors and to the interference of intruders can result in the production of errors in data to be transferred. On the other hand, in as much as wireless sensors have limited energy, optimal consumption of energy for enhancing network lifetime is of high significance. In this paper, a protocol based on block-level retransmission and network-coding has been proposed which is intended to optimize error recovery in sensor networks. This protocol takes the parameters of reliability and energy consumption into account. In this protocol, data frames are divided into blocks and in the case of error occurrence, the total frame need not to be transferred since only the error containing block is retransferred using the network coding technique. This procedure minimizes the number of transfer and reception in the nodes. Consequently, energy consumption is reduced. The simulation results revealed that utilizing the networking coding technique in the proposed method results in reliability enhancement. Thus, the simulation results indicate that the proposed method leads to higher reliability and lower energy consumption than the LIERMO method.