Enhanced delay-aware and reliable routing protocol for wireless sensor network

Abstract

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) are distributed low-rate data networks, consist of small sensing nodes equipped with memory, processors and short range wireless communication. The performance of WSN is always measured by the Quality of Service (QoS) parameters that are time delay, reliability and throughput. These networks are dynamic in nature and affect the QoS parameters, especially when real time data delivery is needed. Additionally, in achieving end-to-end delay and reliability, link failures are the major causes that have not been given much attention. So, there is a demanding need of an efficient routing protocol to be developed in order to minimize the delay and provide on time delivery of data in real time WSN applications. An efficient Delay-Aware Path Selection Algorithm (DAPSA) is proposed to minimize the access end-to-end delay based on hop count, link quality and residual energy metrics considering the on time packets delivery. Furthermore, an Intelligent Service Classifier Queuing Model (ISCQM) is proposed to distinguish the real time and non-real time traffic by applying service discriminating theory to ensure delivery of real time data with acceptable delay. Moreover, an Efficient Data Delivery and Recovery Scheme (EDDRS) is proposed to achieve improved packet delivery ratio and control link failures in transmission. This will then improve the overall throughput. Based on the above mentioned approaches, an Enhanced Delay-Aware and Reliable Routing Protocol (EDARRP) is developed. Simulation experiments have been performed using NS2 simulator and multiple scenarios are considered in order to examine the performance parameters. The results are compared with the state-of-the-art routing protocols Stateless Protocol for Real-Time Communication (SPEED) and Distributed Adaptive Cooperative Routing Protocol (DACR) and found that on average the proposed protocol has improved the performance in terms of end-to-end delay (30.10%), packet delivery ratio (9.26%) and throughput (5.42%). The proposed EDARRP protocol has improved the performance of WSN.