Modeling and Validating the Optimal Routes of a Sensor Network Using the Electrostatic Field Equations

In this paper, the analogy between the optimal routes within a sensor network and the electrostatic field lines is utilized successfully. In other words, partial differential equations similar to those of the electrostatic field theory are solved using Finite Difference Method (FDM) to find the optimal routes of the network. For the purpose of validation, an Opnet program based on the generated optimal routes is written to find the throughput and delay of the sensor network, a similar program is then applied to some arbitrary routing scenarios. The results show that the throughput and delay performance of the proposed method is better than that of the chosen arbitrary routing scenarios. It is also found from the results that the throughput of some scenarios is 50 % lower than that of the proposed method.