An Efficient Decentralized Routing Framework for Wireless Sensor Networks

Objectives: Wireless Sensor Networks consists of a large number of battery-powered sensor nodes. Each sensor node collects data and forwards them to the sink. If the intermediate node is selected based on its minimal number of hops to the sink, then it will be used more frequently in routing which will lead to its quick expiration. If this happens, few nodes are disconnected from the sink. The energy and data of those nodes will thus be wasted since they have no means to route data. Methods/Statistical Analysis: The proposed method defines the energy definitions for the various categories of a sensor node based on its working and an energy-aware routing scheme named optimal node reliance (ONR) to select intermediate nodes for routing. It calculates the value to which nodes are participating in routing. By calculating the cost of nodes that are involved in routing helps to reduce the usage of a particular intermediate node repeatedly, thus avoiding the faster expiration of such nodes and thus maximizing the lifetime of the network. The optimal routing path and the common node is selected based on the residual energy calculated for each node. Then the packets from different sources are buffered at the common node and send them as a single packet to the sink. This will reduce the number of packets been sent through the same intermediate nodes to reach the sink. Findings: We then analyze the tradeoffs among communication delay, the energy requirement for route calculation, time taken for route calculation of the proposed method and few existing methods. It is observed that the proposed scheme holds good for the above-measured parameters. Application/Improvement: This ensures the selection of optimal routing path between any sensor node and its destination, avoiding the usage a particular intermediate node, thus preserving its energy and data. This eventually maximizes the lifetime of the Wireless sensor network.