Routing techniques in wireless sensor networks: a survey

Wireless sensor networks consist of small nodes with sensing, computation, and wireless communications capabilities. Many routing, power management, and data dissemination protocols have been specifically designed for WSNs where energy awareness is an essential design issue. Routing protocols in WSNs might differ depending on the application and network architecture. In this article we present a survey of state-of-the-art routing techniques in WSNs. We first outline the design challenges for routing protocols in WSNs followed by a comprehensive survey of routing techniques. Overall, the routing techniques are classified into three categories based on the underlying network structure: flit, hierarchical, and location-based routing. Furthermore, these protocols can be classified into multipath-based, query-based, negotiation-based, QoS-based, and coherent-based depending on the protocol operation. We study the design trade-offs between energy and communication overhead savings in every routing paradigm. We also highlight the advantages and performance issues of each routing technique. The article concludes with possible future research areas.     

无线传感器网络LEACH协议的研究

在无线传感器网络中,与平面路由协议相比,分簇路由协议具有一定的优势.它具有拓扑管理方便、能量利用高效.数据融合简单等优点,成为当前路由协议研究的重点.本文以低能量自适应聚类(LEACH)为例,对分簇路由协议进行了分析.在此基础上,提出改进了的LEACH ED_LEACH(Base on Energy and Di Stance factors-Low-Energy Adaptive Clustering Hierarchy),通过使用MATLAB进行了仿真,仿真结果表明ED_LEACH算法能更有效地延长网络寿命.     

A peer-to-peer zone-based two-level link state routing for mobilead hoc networks

A new global positioning system (GPS)-based routing protocol for ad hoc networks, called zone-based hierarchical link state (ZHLS) routing protocol, is proposed. In this protocol, the network is divided into nonoverlapping zones. Each node only knows the node connectivity within its zone and the zone connectivity of the whole network. The link state routing is performed on two levels: focal node and global zone levels. Unlike other hierarchical protocols, there is no cluster head in this protocol. The zone level topological information is distributed to all nodes. This “peer-to-peer” manner mitigates traffic bottleneck, avoids single point of failure, and simplifies mobility management. Since only zone ID and node ID of a destination are needed for routing, the route from a source to a destination is adaptable to changing topology. The zone ID of the destination is found by sending one location request to every zone. Simulation results show that our location search scheme generates less overhead than the schemes based on flooding. The results also confirm that the communication overhead for creating and maintaining the topology in the proposed protocol is smaller than that in the flat LSR protocol. This new routing protocol provides a flexible, efficient, and effective approach to accommodate the changing topology in a wireless network environment     

A Performance Comparison of Flat and Cluster Based Routings in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

The objective of this paper is to study the performance comparison between flat and cluster-based routings in MANETs. Previous study shows that an earlier proposed cluster-based routing, Cluster based Routing Protocol (CBRP), has poorer performance due to its inefficient clustering algorithms based on Least Clusterhead Change (LCC) and Lowest ID (LID). Thus, in this paper, we first propose a new cluster-based routing, namely efficient cluster based routing protocol (ECBRP), which is based on a more efficient and stable clustering scheme. In addition, a new information table update mechanism utilizing routing events and data forwarding events is introduced in ECBRP to enhance the clustering and routing performance. The performance comparison in terms of packet delivery ratio and normalized routing overhead between flat and cluster based routings are studied extensively. Two flat routings (Dynamic Source Routing (DSR) and Ad Hoc On-demand Distance Vector (AODV)) and two cluster-based routing (CBRP and ECBRP) under various scenarios such as traffic load, mobility, network size and network area are considered in our study. By evaluating the performance of ECBRP and CBRP, we can study how the performance of a CBRP is affected by its underlying cluster structure. Simulation results show that ECBRP can achieve satisfying routing performance and outperform other routing schemes, DSR, AODV and CBRP, under the same simulated scenarios.     

Passive cluster-based multipath routing protocol for wireless sensor networks

Energy efficiency and quality of service (QoS) are both essential issues in the applications of wireless sensor networks (WSNs) all along, which are mainly reflected in the development of routing and MAC protocols. However, there is little design for achieving the dual performances simultaneously. In this paper, we develop a practical passive cluster-based node-disjoint many to one multipath routing protocol to satisfy the requirements of energy efficiency and QoS in practical WSNs. Passive clustering approach is put to use in the first round, while active clustering technique is taken in the other rounds. Implementation of smart delay strategy makes the cluster distribute uniformly, as well as lessen the number of nodes that have taken part in routing. Among cluster heads, a node-disjoint many to one multipath routing discovery algorithm, which is composed of the optimal path searching process and multipath expansion process, is implemented to find multiple paths at the minimum cost. The simulation results show the proposed protocol achieved very good performance both in energy efficiency and QoS.     

Cooperation of Network and Service Layer in Mobile Ad hoc Networks

In this article, we investigate how a service discovery protocol at the service layer in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks can be improved, by utilizing routing information from the network layer. We consider in this article proactive routing protocols as basis for the underlying routing mechanism, and focus on the optimization of proactive service discovery protocols. First we introduce a general framework, enabling the cooperation of service layer and network layer, and then we propose the optimization scheme. The performance evaluation done by simulation shows that the proposed cooperation scheme can optimize the service discovery protocol, i.e. reduce the communication cost of service discovery, by utilizing routing table and topology information.     

Survey on cluster-based routing protocols for cognitive radio sensor networks

Routing protocols could achieve efficient convergecast transmission of sensed data in cognitive radio sensor network (CRSN),and it is of vital importance for the whole network performance.In particular,cluster-based routing protocols could further lower routing selection complexity and improve scalability.Therefore,an overview of cluster-based routing protocols for CRSN was provided.Firstly,after a brief introduction to the concept and advantages of clustering in CRSN,the major factors concerning clustering algorithm design were pointed out.Secondly,the challenges faced by routing protocol design in CRSN and basic design principles were explored.Thirdly,the previous work of cluster-based routing protocols for CRSN was systematically analyzed and summarized.Finally,issues that require urgent solutions and future research directions were suggested.     

A boolean spider monkey optimization based energy efficient clustering approach for WSNs

Wireless sensor network (WSN) consists of densely distributed nodes that are deployed to observe and react to events within the sensor field. In WSNs, energy management and network lifetime optimization are major issues in the designing of cluster-based routing protocols. Clustering is an efficient data gathering technique that effectively reduces the energy consumption by organizing nodes into groups. However, in clustering protocols, cluster heads (CHs) bear additional load for coordinating various activities within the cluster. Improper selection of CHs causes increased energy consumption and also degrades the performance of WSN. Therefore, proper CH selection and their load balancing using efficient routing protocol is a critical aspect for long run operation of WSN. Clustering a network with proper load balancing is an NP-hard problem. To solve such problems having vast search area, optimization algorithm is the preeminent possible solution. Spider monkey optimization (SMO) is a relatively new nature inspired evolutionary algorithm based on the foraging behaviour of spider monkeys. It has proved its worth for benchmark functions optimization and antenna design problems. In this paper, SMO based threshold-sensitive energy-efficient clustering protocol is proposed to prolong network lifetime with an intend to extend the stability period of the network. Dual-hop communication between CHs and BS is utilized to achieve load balancing of distant CHs and energy minimization. The results demonstrate that the proposed protocol significantly outperforms existing protocols in terms of energy consumption, system lifetime and stability period.     

Energy-aware and quality of service-based routing in wireless sensor networks and vehicular ad hoc networks

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) have increasingly been used for remote monitoring tasks. Limited capabilities of sensor nodes in terms of communication, computation, and storage, present challenges to protocols designed for WSNs. Due to the severe energy constraint of sensor nodes, among the major concerns is the problem of designing efficient energy-aware routing protocols. Numerous routing protocols have been proposed in the literature. Cluster-based routing protocols for large-scale WSNs have some advantages as compared to a flat network topology. Clustering results in a reduced number of messages that propagate through the network in order to accomplish a sensing task. It also offers improved power control. Quality of Service (QoS) is becoming an important feature of data routing in WSNs. QoS is required for real-time data transmission when the result of a sensing task is dependent not only on the correct sensing of the environment but also on the timely delivery of the event notification to the monitoring center, the Sink. The emergency preparedness and response class of applications, for instance, impose delay requirements on the delivery of event notification messages. Transmitting video and imaging data poses certain bandwidth, delay, and jitter requirements on the routing protocols. Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks (VANETs) are envisioned to improve intervehicle coordination and become a part of intelligent transport systems with an ultimate goal of increasing safety on the roads and improving travel comfort. VANETs may include WSNs that are placed along the sides of roads and provide monitoring of road conditions. Routing protocols for VANETs also aim at satisfying end-to-end QoS requirements. This paper first discusses energy-efficient clustering routing protocols for WSNs, followed by approaches aimed at satisfying QoS in WSNs and VANETS. Lastly, a discussion and comparison of features of the selected routing protocols and QoS-based approaches is presented.     

A mobile sink path planning for wireless sensor networks based on priority‐ordered dependent nonparametric trees

The professional design of the routing protocols with mobile sink(s) in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) is important for many purposes such as maximizing energy efficiency, increasing network life, and evenly distributing load balance across the network. Moreover, mobile sinks ought to first collect data from nodes which have very important and dense data so that packet collision and loss can be prevented at an advanced level. For these purposes, the present paper proposes a new mobile path planning protocol by introducing priority‐ordered dependent nonparametric trees (PoDNTs) for WSNs. Unlike traditional clustered or swarm intelligence topology‐based routing methods, a topology which has hierarchical and dependent infinite tree structure provides a robust link connection between nodes, making it easier to reselect ancestor nodes (ANs). The proposed priority‐ordered infinite trees are sampled in the specific time frames by introducing new equations and hierarchically associated with their child nodes starting from the root node. Hence, the nodes with the highest priority and energy that belong to the constructed tree family are selected as ANs with an opportunistic approach. A mobile sink simply visits these ANs to acquire data from all nodes in the network and return to where it started. As a result, the route traveled is assigned as the mobile path for the current round. We have performed comprehensive performance analysis to illustrate the effectiveness of the present study using NS‐2 simulation environment. The present routing protocol has achieved better results than the other algorithms over various performance metrics.     

Key management issues in wireless sensor networks: current proposals and future developments

Key management has remained a challenging issue in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) due to the constraints of sensor node resources. Various key management schemes that trade off security and operational requirements have been proposed in recent years. In this article, we first examine the security and operational requirements of WSNs and then review five key management protocols: Eschenauer, Du, LEAP, SHELL, and Panja. Eschenauer's scheme is a classical random key distribution scheme for WSNs. Du's scheme improves on Eschenauer's scheme by using key matrices. LEAP provides a highly flexible key management scheme using four types of keys. SHELL focuses on achieving high robustness, and Panja is optimized for hierarchical WSNs. LEAP, SHELL, and Panja support cluster-based operations and are more aligned with current trends as shown by the new standards, IEEE 802.15.4b and the ZigBee "enhanced" standard. Future developments likely will incorporate the features of LEAP and adjustable robustness enhancements from Eschenauer or Du; extremely security-critical applications may benefit from restructuring SHELL to ease implementation and maintenance. Developments for extremely large WSNs should consider improving Panja's scheme due to its hierarchical scalability feature.     

Routing with off-network control: a novel paradigm for scalable design in very large sensor networks

This paper presents a novel architectural solution to address the problem of scalable routing in very large sensor networks. The control complexities of the existing sensor routing protocols, both flat and with traditional hierarchy, do not scale very well for large networks with potentially hundreds of thousands of embedded sensor devices. This paper develops a novel routing solution Off-Network Control Processing (ONCP) that achieves control scalability in large sensor networks by shifting certain amount of routing functions “off-network”. This routing approach, consisting of “coarse grain” global routing, and distributed “fine grain” local routing is proposed for achieving scalability by avoiding network-wide control message dissemination. We present the ONCP architectural concepts and analytically characterize its performance in relation to both flat and traditional hierarchical sensor routing architectures. We also present ns2-based experimental results which indicate that for very large networks, the packet drop, latency and energy performance of ONCP can be significantly better than those for flat sensor routing protocols such as Directed Diffusion and cluster-based traditional hierarchical protocols such as CBRP.     

IBLEACH: intra-balanced LEACH protocol for wireless sensor networks

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are composed of many low cost, low power devices with sensing, local processing and wireless communication capabilities. Recent advances in wireless networks have led to many new protocols specifically designed for WSNs where energy awareness is an essential consideration. Most of the attention, however, has been given to the routing protocols since they might differ depending on the application and network architecture. Minimizing energy dissipation and maximizing network lifetime are important issues in the design of routing protocols for WSNs. In this paper, the low-energy adaptive clustering hierarchy (LEACH) routing protocol is considered and improved. We propose a clustering routing protocol named intra-balanced LEACH (IBLEACH), which extends LEACH protocol by balancing the energy consumption in the network. The simulation results show that IBLEACH outperforms LEACH and the existing improvements of LEACH in terms of network lifetime and energy consumption minimization.     

A secure routing protocol with regional partitioned clustering and Beta trust management in smart home

With the emergence of the Internet of Things (IoT) in recent years, the security has been significantly called more and more people’s attention on wireless communication between the devices and the human-beings, as well as the devices to devices. Smart home (SH), as a small-scale example of the smart application-based field, has benefited from the concept of IoT since it uses an indoor data-centric sensor network. In SH, routing schemes are widely utilized for data aggregation purposes. However, there are three main issues, which can considerably affect the current execution of routing protocol in SH: (1) lack of technical methods for precisely regional division of the network, (2) the difficulty of differentiating data among various functional regions, and (3) the vulnerability of network with advanced internal routing attacks. To address the aforementioned issues, in this paper, a two-layer cluster-based network model for indoor structured SH and a novel Beta-based trust management (BTM) scheme are proposed to defend various types of internal attacks by integrating the variation of trust value, threshold, and evaluation. The proposed structure forms a secure hierarchical routing protocol called SH-PCNBTM to effectively support the data transmission service in SH networks. The performance of SH-PCNBTM is thoroughly evaluated by using a set of comprehensive simulations. We will show that the proposed routing protocol not only ensures the even distribution of cluster-heads in each sub-region, but it also identifies and isolates the malicious sensor nodes accurately and rapidly compared with other trust-based hierarchical routing protocols.

     

Routing in multihop packet switching networks: Gb/s challenge

The authors survey networking solutions that have been proposed for high-speed packet-switched applications. Using these solutions as examples, they identify the specific problems resulting from very high transmission rates and explain how these problems influence the design of high-speed networks and protocols. They conclude that the solutions based on deflection routing are the most promising ones and suggest a number of directions for their evolution. By a packet-switching protocol we mean the network-specific portion of the third OSI layer (i.e., the network layer) of the protocol stack. One part of a packet-switching protocol (according to our definition) is the routing scheme, i.e., the set of rules that assign incoming packets to output links. In general, we can talk about the following three components of the communication subnetwork which are relevant from our point of view: the routing protocol; the congestion-control mechanisms that can be effectively incorporated into the routing protocol; and the network topology. These components are closely related to each other and together offer a single functionality. We discuss routing protocols and congestion-control mechanisms employed in contemporary packet-switched networks, not necessarily in networks operating at very high transmission rates. Then, following some basic definitions related to the topology component, we investigate the challenges posed by the Gb/s transmission rates     

Optimistic Selection of Cluster Heads Based on Facility Location Problem in Cluster-Based Routing Protocols

Cluster-based routing protocols are one of the most favorable approaches for energy management in wireless sensor networks. The selection of the best cluster heads (CHs), as well as the formation of optimal clusters, is an NP-hard problem. The present study proposes an optimal solution for CHs selection to generate a network topology with optimized network performance. The problem is formulated as facility location problem and a linear programming model is used to solve the optimization problem. Results of analysis o the network simulator (NS2) indicate that applying this method in cluster-based routing protocols prolongs 16 % of the network lifetime, increases 15.5 % of data transmission and improves 5.5 % of throughput, as compared to the results of current heuristic methods such as LEACH, DEEC and EDFCM protocols.     

Scalable routing protocols for mobile ad hoc networks

The growing interest in mobile ad hoc network techniques has resulted in many routing protocol proposals. Scalability issues in ad hoc networks are attracting increasing attention these days. We survey the routing protocols that address scalability. The routing protocols included in the survey fall into three categories: flat routing protocols; hierarchical routing approaches; GPS augmented geographical routing schemes. The article compares the scalability properties and operational features of the protocols and discusses challenges in future routing protocol designs     

Stable-Aware Evolutionary Routing Protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks

In real life scenario for wireless sensor networks (WSNs), energy heterogeneity among the sensor nodes due to uneven terrain, connectivity failure, and packet dropping is a crucial factor that triggered the race for developing robust and reliable routing protocols. Prolonging the time interval before the death of the first sensor node, viz. the stability period, is critical for many applications where the feedback from the WSN must be reliable. Although Low Energy Adaptive Clustering Hierarchy (LEACH) and LEACH-like protocols are fundamental and popular clustering protocols to manage the system’s energy and thus to prolong the lifespan of the network, they assume a near to a perfect energy homogeneous system where a node failure, drainage and re-energizing are typically not considered. More recent protocols like Stable Election Protocol (SEP) considers the reverse, i.e., energy heterogeneity, and properly utilizes the extra energy to guarantee a stable and reliable performance of the network system. While paradigms of computational intelligence such as evolutionary algorithms (EAs) have attracted significant attention in recent years to address various WSN’s challenges such as nodes deployment and localization, data fusion and aggregation, security and routing, they did not (to the best of our knowledge) explore the possibility of maintaining heterogeneous-aware energy consumption to guarantee a reliable and robust routing protocol design. By this, a new protocol named stable-aware evolutionary routing protocol (SAERP), is proposed in this paper to ensure maximum stability and minimum instability periods for both homogeneous/heterogeneous WSNs. SAERP introduces an evolutionary modeling, where the cluster head election probability becomes more efficient, to well maintain balanced energy consumption in both energy homogeneous and heterogeneous settings. The performance of SAERP over simulation for 90 WSNs is evaluated and compared to well known LEACH and SEP protocols. We found that SAERP is more robust and always ensures longer stability period and shorter instability period.     

A Domain-Based Routing Protocol for SSM Source Mobility in Mobile IPv6 Networks

In Mobile IP, the signaling traffic overhead will be too high since the new Care-of-Address (CoA) of the mobile node (MN) is registered all the way with the home agent (HA) whenever the MN has moved into a new foreign network. To complement Mobile IP in better handling local movement, several IP micro protocols have been proposed. These protocols introduce a hierarchical mobility management scheme, which divides the mobility into micro mobility and macro mobility according to whether the host's movement is intra-domain or inter-domain. Thus, the requirements on performance and flexibility are achieved, especially for frequently moving hosts. This paper introduces a routing protocol for multicast source mobility on the basis of the hierarchical mobile management scheme, which provides a unified global architecture for both uni- and multicast routing in mobile networks. The implementation of multicast services adopts an improved SSM (Source Specific Multicast) model, which combines the advantages of the existing protocols in scalability and mobility transparency. Simulation results show that the proposed protocol has better performance than the existing routing protocols for SSM source mobility.     

ECRP: an energy-aware cluster-based routing protocol for wireless sensor networks

Energy conservation is the main issue in wireless sensor networks. Many existing clustering protocols have been proposed to balance the energy consumption and maximize the battery lifetime of sensor nodes. However, these protocols suffer from the excessive overhead due to repetitive clustering resulting in high-energy consumption. In this paper, we propose energy-aware cluster-based routing protocol (ECRP) in which not only the cluster head (CH) role rotates based on energy around all cluster members until the end of network functioning to avoid frequent re-clustering, but also it can adapt the network topology change. Further, ECRP introduces a multi-hop routing algorithm so that the energy consumption is minimized and balanced. As well, a fault-tolerant mechanism is proposed to cope up with the failure of CHs and relay nodes. We perform extensive simulations on the proposed protocol using different network scenarios. The simulation results demonstrate the superiority of ECRP compared with recent and relevant existing protocols in terms of main performance metrics.