Fuzzy rule-based faulty node classification and management scheme for large scale wireless sensor networks

In a wireless sensor network (WSNs), probability of node failure rises with increase in number of sensor nodes within the network. The, quality of service (QoS) of WSNs is highly affected by the faulty sensor nodes. If faulty sensor nodes can be detected and reused for network operation, QoS of WSNs can be improved and will be sustainable throughout the monitoring period. The faulty nodes in the deployed WSN are crucial to detect due to its improvisational nature and invisibility of internal running status. Furthermore, most of the traditional fault detection methods in WSNs do not consider the uncertainties that are inherited in the WSN environment during the fault diagnosis period. Resulting traditional fault detection methods suffer from low detection accuracy and poor performance. To address these issues, we propose a fuzzy rule-based faulty node classification and management scheme for WSNs that can detect and reuse faulty sensor nodes according to their fault status. In order to overcome uncertainties that are inherited in the WSN environment, a fuzzy logic based method is utilized. Fuzzy interface engine categorizes different nodes according to the chosen membership function and the defuzzifier generates a non-fuzzy control to retrieve the various types of nodes. In addition, we employed a routing scheme that reuses the retrieved faulty nodes during the data routing process. We performed extensive experiments on the proposed scheme using various network scenarios. The experimental results are compared with the existing algorithms to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm in terms of various important performance metrics.