Energy efficient communication protocol for wireless sensor networks with mobile node

Abstract

Wireless Sensor Networks have become hot research stuff in the current age. This field has got tremendous scopes in various application areas. Generally, a Wireless Sensor Network contains hundreds or thousands of sensing nodes. It is desirable to make these nodes cheaper. This fact also instigates design of simple and yet efficient algorithms and protocols for data communication over the sensor network and also for the successful operation of the network. Though the sensor nodes are expected to be static throughout, the mobility of the sensor nodes gives rise to some more sophisticated applications like better environment monitoring and tracking.The mobility of the sensor nodes increases the complexity in the design of the algorithms and protocols since it increases the rate of topology change. In this paper, sensor node mobility is considered and a routing protocol for such a mobile sensor network has been proposed.The base station is considered to be powerful as well as static. The proposed routing protocol is hierarchical. The formation of clusters and cluster head node selection are done by the base station. During the clustering process, the sensor field is divided into some virtual grids. The sensor node mobility factor is considered during the cluster formation process. The communication between ordinary sensor nodes and the cluster head node is carried out in single hop fashion. And depending on the current topology, the communication between the cluster head node and the base station may be of multi-hop fashion. The performance of the proposed protocol in terms of energy efficiency is observed through simulation. The results of simulation are reported here. The future scope of the work is outlined.