A tree overlapping-based mesh routing protocol for wireless sensor networks

Abstract

In this paper, a mesh routing protocol is proposed to deliver sensing information effectively in a disaster environment. Many disaster application scenarios in the emergency network of wireless sensors require connectivity between nodes in order to transmit the collected data to a sink node. In case one critical connection is cut by accident, a tree routing structure has possibility of failure which results in delay or disconnection. In tree routing protocols, the packets follow the tree topology for forwarding the emergency data to the sink node, even if the node is located near to the source node. In the disaster site with the existing tree topology, the sensor network is not a very efficient network. In this paper, we present an enhancement of the tree routing protocol by implementing a mesh routing protocol based on tree overlapping. The concept of tree overlapping is to derive a mesh topology by overlapping all the tree structures in the sensor network where each tree structure is rooted at each sensor node. The simulation results show that the proposed algorithm provides shorter average end-to-end delay, reduces the number of hop counts, and also decreases the energy consumption compared to the conventional tree routing protocols. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.