Table of Contents

Chapter 01............................................................................................................................4
Introduction..........................................................................................................................4
1.1 Background...........................................................................................................4
1.2 Routing challenges in Wireless Sensor Networks................................................7
1.2.1 Node deployment...........................................................................................7
1.2.2 Energy consumption......................................................................................7
1.2.3 Quality of service...........................................................................................7
1.2.4 Data aggregation:...........................................................................................8
1.2.5 Coverage........................................................................................................8
1.2.6 Fault tolerance...............................................................................................8
1.2.7 Data delivery model.......................................................................................8
1.3 Problem Statement................................................................................................8
1.4 Objectives..............................................................................................................9
1.5 Thesis Organization..............................................................................................9
2 Literature Review.......................................................................................................10
2.1 Routing in WSN..................................................................................................11
2.2 Network Structure Based Routing......................................................................12
2.2.1 Flat Routing.................................................................................................12
2.2.2 Hierarchical Routing....................................................................................13
2.2.3 Location Based Routing..............................................................................15
2.3 Factors affecting energy consumption................................................................16
2.4 Taxonomy of energy efficient techniques...........................................................16
2.4.1 Topology Control.........................................................................................16
2.4.2 Data Reduction:...........................................................................................17
2.4.3 Energy efficient routing...............................................................................17
2.4.4 Duty cycling.................................................................................................17
2.4.5 Protocol overhead reduction........................................................................18
2.5 Energy efficient routing for lifetime optimization..............................................18
2.6 Interference and congestion aware routing.........................................................20
3 Methodology..............................................................................................................22
3.1 Research Methodology.......................................................................................22
3.2 Network Model...................................................................................................22
3.3 Energy Model......................................................................................................23
3.4 Routing strategy..................................................................................................25
3.4.1 Route discovery phase.................................................................................25
3.4.2 Data forwarding phase.................................................................................26
3.4.3 Maintenance phase.......................................................................................26
3.5 Algorithm............................................................................................................26
3.6 Flow Chart...........................................................................................................27
4 Simulation Results......................................................................................................29
4.1 Network Simulator..............................................................................................30
4.1.1 OMNet++.....................................................................................................30
4.2 Simulation results and discussion.......................................................................30
5 Conclusion and future work.......................................................................................39
5.1 Conclusion..........................................................................................................40
5.2 Future Work........................................................................................................41
This work implements an energy efficient algorithm for wireless sensor networks with
static nodes. This scheme provided the gains in terms of energy efficiency, network
throughput and packet delivery ratio. Since the node mobility was not considered in
this work, so this algorithm needs to be implemented with mobiles nodes in WSN. We
implemented this work with multi hop routing, data aggregation and clustering
technique can be evaluated for the same network. The effect of lager node density with
heterogeneous nodes needs to be explored....................................................................41
Bibliography...................................................................................................................42
Chapter 01

Introduction
1.1 Background
Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) have emerged as the most important technology in
this century that has potential to make our life more comfortable. It has a vast range of
applications like Healthcare, home automation, military surveillance, environmental,
Industrial and area monitoring. WSN is also used in areas where conventional networks
cannot be deployed. Wireless Sensor Networks are composed of tiny sensor nodes that
are low powered, low cost and have low data rate. Figure 1.1 shows the typical size of a
wireless sensor node. Now a days the research is mainly focused on reducing size of
WSN node while increasing its lifetime. Long term unattended and remote monitoring
are the major advantages of employing WSN in our life.

Figure 1.1 Wireless Sensor Node

Sensors collect the information from environment and share their sensed data through
either direct or multi hop communication to a centralized base station for further
processing. Sensor node contains four basic units: sensing, processing, communication
and a battery unit. Sensor nodes operate autonomously with no infrastructure and are
connected to each other to form a network. As sensor nodes are mostly battery operated,
energy efficiency is most critical factor. To prolong the network life time, efficient
energy usage is required [1].

WSN has been vastly used for monitoring and surveillance in habitat and agriculture
monitoring. Figure 1.2 exemplifies the design of WSN architecture, where nodes sense
the target area and send the information to a sink, through some routing protocol. The
collected data is then further processed by end user. As the Wireless Sensor Networks are
application specific so a routing protocol must be designed according to the needs of the
application because there is no single routing solution for all the applications.

Routing protocol defines the route through which data travels within the network. Hence,
it is very important in WSN that the data is delivered to sink node with energy
conservation and enhanced network lifetime.

Figure 1.2: WSN architecture

Due to small size, flexibility, low-cost and ease of deployment wireless sensors are
suitable for many applications of remote area monitoring where traditional wireless or
wired systems cannot be deployed [2]. However, there are certain challenges that need to
be overcome. This includes energy efficiency, interference from relay nodes, congestion,
connectivity, end-to-end delay and reliability.

In WSN it is a common scenario where multiple source nodes send their data
simultaneously to single sink node by multi hop communication, relay nodes suffer
energy depletion, congestion and interference from peer nodes due to high traffic.
Congestion and interference can result into more retransmission of the data which may
lead to energy wastage. Due to energy depletion if a node dies, it causes the topology
change and may require rearranging the system [3].Relay nodes experience congestion
which is an important challenge in WSN caused by: concurrent transmission from
multiple nodes to a single node, overflow in the node’s buffer and packet collision [4].
Many researchers have proposed solutions that save node energy to improve network
lifetime, robustness and reliability of WSN using different techniques.

1.2 Routing challenges in Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless sensor networks consist of large number of sensor nodes that are limited in their
sensing, communicating and processing capabilities. Nodes monitor the environment and
share their sensed information which needs to be delivered to the destination node in an
efficient way using reliable and efficient paths. Data can be forwarded to sink node via
either direct communication or multi hop communication. Efficient routing is a major
concern is WSNs. Limited resources of sensor nodes need to be managed in an efficient
way to prolong the network lifetime. Routing protocols design depends on application
requirements. The two main factors that influence the routing efficiency are energy
conservation and network lifetime[5]. Few of the factors that affect routing in wireless
sensor networks discussed in [6] are

1.2.1 Node deployment

Node deployment in WSNs is application dependent which could be either random or
manual deployment strategy. Manual deployment is followed in case of small networks.
Random deployment is useful for networks that use optimization algorithm to move to an
appropriate location automatically.
1.2.2 Energy consumption
As the node’s life depends on battery which is small and limited in power. So the energy
conservation is important for data communication and processing without losing
accuracy. Three main tasks of node that consume energy are sensing, data
communication and processing. Communication consumes more energy as compared to
other tasks performed by sensor node. Energy consumption can be divided into two
categories 1. Mobility based which minimize the energy dissipation in node movements
2. Data driven which limits the node to sense only related data [7].

1.2.3 Quality of service

QoS assure that the network will produce the estimated results. Energy conservation,
error rate, latency and network throughput are QoS parameters. It is according to the
application demand. QoS achieve multiple goals such as it enables the efficient use of
network resources. Network traffic can be categorized based on priority. It can provide
better services in time critical applications.

1.2.4 Data aggregation:

Multiple nodes generate data which can be aggregated based on particular aggregation
function e.g. to remove the redundant data copies. Combination of data from different
sources for duplicate suppression

1.2.5 Coverage
Sensor nodes have limited range so it can cover a limited area in environment

1.2.6 Fault tolerance

Harsh environment, empty battery or physical damage can be the reason of node failure.
In case of node failure, the overall network functionality must sustain without interrupt.
So the protocol design must consider the fault tolerance mechanism. Most frequently
used technique is multipath routing which improves the network reliability.

1.2.7 Data delivery model

Data delivery influences the routing protocol in terms on energy and depends on the
application. Sensing and data reporting are application dependent. Data reporting model
can be categorized as: query driven, time driven, event driven or hybrid
1.3 Problem Statement
In WSN sensor nodes are tiny devices that are constrained in their resources i.e. limited
in energy, computation and communication capabilities. Sensor nodes are deployed
randomly and are mostly battery operated. To replace or recharge the battery from time to
time is almost impossible. For a WSN to operate and work properly node energy is a
major concern, because if a node die it can affect the network topology and connectivity.
For efficient and reliable data delivery from source to destination node, relay node energy
level, interference and congestion in the network needs to be considered.

1.4 Objectives
The objective of this research is to propose an energy efficient data routing algorithm for
WSN

 The algorithm improves packet delivery ratio by employing reliable paths

for data routing,
 The algorithm provides better network throughput by considering energy,
interference and congestion information of next hop node.

1.5 Thesis Organization

In Chapter 1 introduction about wireless sensor networks has been provided,
applications of WSN and importance of routing has been presented. Problem statement
formulated and based on identified problems the objectives of this research work have
been listed. Remaining part of the thesis is arranged as follows:
 In Chapter 2 various categories of routing are explained also a detailed literature
review about energy efficient algorithms of WSN is presented. Chapter 3 presents the
designed energy efficient routing algorithm. The mechanism of next hop selection for
data routing is presented in details. Chapter4 describes the simulation scenario and
results. Chapter 5 concludes the simulation results

2 Literature Review
 2.1 Routing in WSN
Routing is a process of establishing a route between nodes for data packets to reach the
destination. A number of routing techniques have been proposed for data routing in
wireless sensor networks. As the energy is a major concern in WSN routing. Two main
factors that affect the efficiency of a routing protocol are energy conservation and
network life time[5]. Conventional classification of WSN routing based on network
structure falls in three categories: Flat routing, Hierarchical routing and location based
routing. It can be further classified based on protocol operation [8].

Flat Routing

Network Structure Based Routing

Hierarchical Routing

Location Based Routing

Routing Protocols in WSN

QoS Based Routing

Protocol operation based Routing

Negotiation Based Routing

Query Based Routing

Coherent Based Routing

Multi path Based Routing

Figure 2.1 Classification of Routing Techniques in WSN

2.2 Network Structure Based Routing
2.2.1 Flat Routing
In flat routing all the nodes are peers to each other and have the same capabilities. Nodes
share the data to their neighbor nodes. Flooding, SPIN, Directed Diffusion and Rumor
routing are the examples of flat routing.

Flooding: Simplest routing technique in WSN is flooding. Whenever a node receives a

packet it forwards the data packet to all its neighbor nodes. Data is forwarded until
received by all nodes in the network [9].

Directed diffusion is flat and query-driven protocol. Sink node sends the interest packets
to its neighbor nodes and packet continues to travel in the network to reach source node
as shown in figure 2.2. Gradients are established by each node during interest packet
forwarding process. Source forwards the data to sink by using these gradients [10].

Figure 2.2 Directed Diffusion Protocol

SPIN is a data centric and negotiation based protocol. Negotiation is performed with
neighbor nodes before forwarding the data and then data if forwarded to interested nodes
to avoid unnecessary data routing [11]. Figure 2.3 shows node A starts by advertising to
node B (a). Node B responds by a request to node A (b). After the Node B receives the
requested data (c), it then forwards the advertisements to its neighbors (d), who in turn
send back the requests to B (e-f)
 Figure 2.3 SPIN Protocol

Rumor Routing: In rumor routing event tables are maintained by nodes. Whenever there
is query for an event it is responded by node and an agent forwards it through the
network. Energy consumption is reduced by decreasing communication cost as there is
only one path between source and sink node [12].

2.2.2 Hierarchical Routing

Hierarchical routing protocols inflict a structure on network. Network is structured in
form of clusters where each cluster is assigned with a cluster head. Cluster head is elected
based on highest node energy and performs the coordination and data forwarding while
other nodes perform data collection and forwarding to cluster head. LEACH

Low Energy Adaptive Clustering (LEACH) is hierarchical protocol. It reduces energy

consumption by decreasing the number of transmission using data aggregating. It
improves the scalability and network life time. It consists of two phases: Set up phase and
steady state phase. In set up phase it is determined by some stochastic algorithm in each
round whether or not a node becomes a cluster head. If a node becomes a cluster head it
cannot become cluster again for certain number of rounds. Rotation of the role between
the nodes ensures balanced energy consumption. In steady state phase data is forwarded
to the sink node and duration for this phase is longer then set up phase.
 Figure 2.4 LEACH Protocol

Power-Efficient Gathering in Sensor Information Systems (PEGASIS) is an

improvement over LEACH. In this protocol nodes are arranged in a way to make a chain
either by nodes using greedy algorithm or by the base station. Each node can send or
receive data from neighbor nodes. Nodes transmit data to base station in turns to reduce
the energy consumption per round [13].

Threshold sensitive Energy Efficient sensor Network protocol (TEEN) is hierarchical

cluster based protocol specially designed for monitoring the sudden changes in target area
attributes. In this protocol cluster head broadcasts hard and soft threshold values. Beyond
value of HT (hard threshold) a node must turn its transmitter on and notify its cluster
head. In case of ST (soft threshold) which is a small change in sensed value, so the
node’s transmitter is turned on and sends the data to base station.

Figure 2.5 TEEN Protocol

2.2.3 Location Based Routing
In location based routing, nodes are aware of their positions through some positioning
system like GPS or via coordination between the nodes. Nodes use this information for
data forwarding through the network [14]. GEAR and GAF are the examples of location
based routing.

Geographical and Energy aware Routing (GEAR) protocol selects the neighbor nodes
for forwarding the packet to a target region instead of a single node. It uses localization
system or Global Information system to find the location information. Nodes are aware of
their residual energy, location and neighbor node’s location. It increases the lifetime of
the network by energy balancing and reduces the delay [15].

Geographic Adaptive Fidelity (GAF) is energy aware location based protocol. The
network is split into virtual grids. Nodes in one cell can communicate with nodes in
neighbor cells. Every node is allocated to a cell and only one node at a time is active
which is selected based on highest residual energy [16].

Figure 2.6 GAF Protocol

2.3 Factors affecting energy consumption
In Wireless sensor networks, sensor node energy is used for sensing, processing and data
transmission to achieve the required task. Sensing acquires the data from target area or
environment. A lot of redundant samples are collected and by reducing the sensing
frequency energy can be saved. Communication is a rapacious factor of energy waste.
With respect to communication a huge amount of energy is wasted in states as discussed
in [17] are

 Collision: Collision occurs when a node receives multiple packets simultaneously

from different nodes. It causes the packet drop and retransmission of packets.
 Interference: when a node is out of transmission range but inside the interference
range, it can receive the data but can’t decode it.
 Control packet overhead: Least possible control packets to be used to data
communication.
 Overhearing: whenever any sensor node transmits the data packet, all the
neighbour nodes receive it whether packet is intended for them or not. So energy
is dissipated for unwanted packets.
 Idle Listening: To receive a possible transmission, a node remains in listening
state. Idle listening is a major concern for energy waste.

For WSN evaluation, Network lifetime is the main factor. A lot of techniques have
been proposed for reduced energy consumption and for improving network lifetime.

2.4 Taxonomy of energy efficient techniques

Energy efficient techniques discussed in [18] and [19] are classified into five main
categories, namely topology control, data reduction, energy efficient routing, protocol
overhead reduction and duty cycling.

2.4.1 Topology Control

Transmission power is controlled while sustaining the network connectivity.
Topology control minimises the active nodes to dynamically adapt a network
topology according to the application’s needs. Local information results in
generation of a new topology.
2.4.2 Data Reduction:
Two approaches are used to reduce the number of data packets delivered to sink
node: Avoiding the unnecessary data packets and limiting the sensing task. Data
aggregation by the relay nodes along the path towards the sink node reduces the
traffic and it may result in reduced latency. However, it can lose the accuracy of
data. Depending on data aggregation techniques, real data may not be retrieved by
sink node [20]. Adaptive Sampling: Sensing task consumes energy and to reduce
the unnecessary sensing samples. It can be adjusted according to user’s needs. For
example, [21] proposes to adjust the data sampling according to the user activity
as it is useless to sense when there is no activity.
Network Coding: In broadcast scenario traffic is reduced using linear combination
of multiple packets instead of individual copy for each packet. As the
communication consumes more energy than computation and network coding
exploits this trade off.

2.4.3 Energy efficient routing

The main objective of protocol designing is to reduce energy consumption and
maximize the network lifetime. Routing can acutely drain battery power.
Hierarchical routing achieve energy efficiency by reducing transmission power
for intra cluster communication and perform data aggregation to reduce number
of transmissions, Energy balance is achieved by rotating the role of cluster head.
Energy aware protocols use residual energy information of nodes as a route
selection metric along with shortest path to avoid nodes with low energy.
Opportunistic protocols take advantage of broadcast nature of wireless
transmission or sink mobility to reduce energy consumption. Location based
protocols use geographical location for directed data routing. Data centric
algorithms use the metadata to send data packets to interested nodes and reduce
number of transmissions.

2.4.4 Duty cycling

Node’s radio states can be scheduled according to the needs of application to
reduce idle listening. Duty cycling reduces the energy consumption greatly but
 they can cause latency as the receiver node needs to be in active state before it can
receive data.

2.4.5 Protocol overhead reduction

Different techniques exist to increases the routing protocol efficiency by overhead
reduction. Transmission duration of data packets adjusted based on distance to
source node or network stability.
Cross layer routing techniques optimize the communication protocol by
considering application requirements. A significant overhead reduction can be
achieved by optimized flooding.

2.5 Energy efficient routing for lifetime optimization

Different routing techniques exist for WSN that use the node energy efficiently to
optimize the network lifetime. As the node energy utilization is a major concern in WSN.

An improvement is made to directed diffusion in [22]. Instead of choosing the path with
highest node energy levels, choose the path with highest average residual node energy
and a node’s minimum energy level should be highest among the available paths with
minimum node energy levels.

Authors in [23] have proposed an opportunistic routing algorithm that is used for data
forwarding through multi hop relay nodes. Different parameters are used that are function
of factors: distance to destination sink node and remaining node energy to optimize
network lifetime. In WSN, data delivery from source to destination requires stable
routing links. Relay nodes failure may cause disconnection to the destination node and
results in transmission failure. A probabilistic algorithm for data dissemination through
relay nodes is proposed in [24] to enhance network lifetime. The concept of “equivalent
node” is used for optimal relay node selection. Algorithm makes the network energy
efficient and ensures the communication quality. In Energy aware multipath protocol,
sink node initiates the route formation process and source location is already known to
the sink node. At the end of route formation process, one primary and multiple alternate
paths are built between source and destination node. In an active path if a node’s energy
is below threshold then it informs the sink node which in turn selects another node for
data transmission and node with low energy go to sleep mode. In case of no available
path sink start the neighbor node and multipath discovery phase [25].

An energy efficient and reliable routing protocol is proposed in [26]. To improve

network lifetime and balanced energy utilization, routing algorithm considers the Cauchy
inequation, based on two parameters: energy usage for routing and routing distance
between every relay nodes. By achieving a relation between parameters, an appropriate
next hop is selected for routing. Based on results, algorithm’s equilibrium is cogent. An
energy efficient algorithm is proposed in [27] for connected target coverage in WSN. To
enhance network life time, algorithm selects shortest data collection path between source
and destination. Data collection algorithm works in three phases. In hop count phase
every node calculate hop count, in second phase each node finds its neighbor nodes by
broadcasting hello message containing its node id, in the third phase source node
monitors target and forward the generated data packets by selecting the next hop with
maximum node energy. This process continues until data reaches the destination node. In
[28] authors have proposed an energy efficient protocol to prolong network life. The
protocol creates rendezvous region and then creates a tree in that region. Data
transmission between source and sink node in done in two modes: either source sends the
data to sink node via tree, or the sink sends its location to the tree and source node gets
the location to directly forward the data to the sink node. Algorithm improves network
life and reduces delay and energy consumption significantly. ACBR protocol is proposed
in [29] which distributes the data forwarding between different node for load balancing.
A path is selected from multiple elected paths, which considers the residual node energy,
So the nodes can take a decision for balanced energy consumption, increasing network
life span and reducing the network partitioning. An energy aware routing algorithm is
presented in [30] named SGEAR to select a more suitable path for data routing. It
considers the remaining node energy level and the energy cost of the path to achieve
Nash equilibrium. In [31] an event driven energy aware routing protocol proposes
dynamic delivery scheme. It makes a priority for events and creates route based on
priority level. It creates a single path for a normal event, multiple paths for events with
high reliability requirement and a path for events with low latency requirement. The
algorithm considers the residual node energy for dynamic selection of energy efficient
paths for data packets. In [32] a data forwarding scheme is proposed which considers the
next hop node for data forwarding with less number of neighbor nodes and maximum
residual node energy to avoid packet duplication and congestion while balancing the
energy consumption. For reliable data delivery in WSN, an adaptive opportunistic routing
technique is presented in [33]. It selects the node for data forwarding based on energy and
distance to maintain the network energy balance and assuring the selection of unique
node every time for data forwarding. Minimum energy dissipates with selection of
optimal route for data forwarding. In [34] an energy efficient algorithm is presented
which selects the next hop node based on path load, link energy and single hop delay for
minimizing the network energy consumption and network delay.

2.6 Interference and congestion aware routing

Network congestion causes the degradation in network throughput, energy depletion and
packet loss. To cope with congestion a traffic-aware scheme is proposed in [35] for data
dissemination in multi sink network from source to sink node. The algorithm is devised
through making virtual gradient field containing depth field, based on low cost path, and
traffic load information on neighbor nodes to reduce network congestion, better
utilization of network resources and reduce the retransmission of data packets. In [36] a
congestion avoidance technique for multipath data routing in WSN is proposed by
selecting the appropriate path based on three parameters: relative success rate of a node,
distance between transmitting and receiving nodes and node’s buffer capacity. More
traffic in network causes the increase in congestion and packet loss probability.
Congestion causes the packet loss, buffer overflow and more queuing time. Packet loss
reduces the reliability of network. A congestion control technique is proposed in [37] by
using buffer management. Packets are classified based on data priority. To control the
congestion, packets are redirected according to data priority, remaining node energy and
buffer occupancy of the neighbor node. Routing performance is affected by congestion
management and performance fairness. It is contingent to make congestion in high
traffic WSNs. Congestion can greatly affect the energy efficiency. It can cause higher
packet loss and buffer overflow, results in energy waste. So to avoid congestion a data
priority based forwarding algorithm is proposed in [38]. Redirected data traffic and
buffer management is used to avoid congestion.
 Energy and interference aware protocol presented in [39] for load balancing in
WSN. Protocol establishes multiple paths between source and destination based on
parameters: residual energy and interference metric. During path discovery, nodes in
interference zone are noted and excluded from routing process. Network quality improves
by decreased interference. Load balancing algorithm distributes the data packets between
different paths based on weight of parameters. In [40] Author proposed a QoS multipath
Geographic routing protocol. The protocol finds multiple disjoint node paths with
minimum interference between source and destination node. Next hop node for data
forwarding, is selected based on metrics: remaining energy level, distance and triangle
link quality to reduce possible inter path interference. Triangle link quality metric is
comprised of SNR, Link quality indicator, and packet reception ratio, provides the link
quality characteristics to select reliable node for data forwarding. The proposed protocol
enhances the network life and improves end-to-end latency and packet delivery ratio.

Authors in [3] proposed a protocol for energy efficient routing which considers
channel interference and congestion values for data routing. Packet forwarding is based
on a function which uses three factors: SINR value between two nodes, congestion on the
next node and path survivability based on node energy, to select next hop node. It works
better with high traffic and improves network throughput, residual energy of nodes and
packet delivery ratio. Authors in [41] proposed a congestion avoidance routing technique.
They have categorized the data into normal and critical data. For normal data, next hop
node is selected based on congestion on next node, residual energy and SNR value
between source and next node. For critical data priority based routing scheme is also
proposed.
 3 Methodology

3.1 Research Methodology

An extensive Literature review is carried out in the area of WSN routing. To familiarize with
routing challenges and the techniques used to cope with challenges and constraints of WSN like
energy efficiency, congestion and interference. Then simulations are performed using OMNet++
software in INET framework.

3.2 Network Model

The network model that will be considered for simulation is:
 1. A 2-dimensional network model
assumed to be composed of randomly
deployed stationary sensor nodes.
2. Nodes are homogeneous i.e. nodes
have same sensing, computational,
communicating and initial energy
capacities.
3. Location aware nodes, x and y
coordinates used for simulation
purpose. Distance between nodes is
Figure 3.1 Example Topology
Euclidean distance.

4. Multiple source single sink (MSSS) topology is considered where multiple nodes forward
data simultaneously to a sink node.

3.3 Energy Model

Most commonly used energy consumption model for node energy is first order radio model [42].
In battery operated Wireless sensor networks, radio communication is major energy dissipating
module. Assumption of homogenous node permits the same data rate for all the nodes.

Figure 1 illustrates the model for transmitting and receiving an n-bits message.

Etx (d ) Erx
N bit packet
N bit packet

Transmit energy TX Amplifier Receive energy

 Figure 3.2: First Order Radio Model

Energy for transmitting n-bit packet, where r is data rate, d is the distance between sender
and receiver, is path loss component and ranges between [2,4] its value for free space

is 2, and 4 for multipath fading, is energy required for circuit to operate and is the
energy required for amplifier

(1)

Energy consumption for n-bit reception:

(2)

Energy required for node “i” to send and receive n-bit message

(3)

(4)

5. Congestion at a node “i” is calculated using

(5)

Where is the traffic reception rate at which packets received by physical layer from

upper layers in a unit time. is service rate i.e. rate at which packets flow out in unit time
to physical path [3].

6. Path survivability of node is the ratio between minimum power along the path and total
energy consumption for path [30].

(6)

Total energy consumption along the path is “c” and “a” is the minimum energy of node
along the path
 7. SINR is a ratio of signal strength to interference and noise [43]. Amount of interference

and ambient noise at receiver at edge is , expressed as

(7)

is path gain between transmitter on link and receiver on edge .

is transmission power of transmitter on link , is ambient noise at receiver

node “i” .So the SINR value at edge ei is calculated using eq.

(8)

8. Distance “l” between nodes in the network is calculated using eq.

(9)

9. Survivability factor for path selection is found using eq.

(10)

, and δ are used to set different weighs of the factors, , and .

Routing algorithm is reactive gradient based, query driven and initiated by destination
node.

3.4 Routing strategy

The algorithm consists of three phases.

3.4.1 Route discovery phase

Sink node forwards the route request packet to the whole network through its neighbor
nodes to all the other nodes in the network and at the end of this phase routing table are
created and multiple paths found between source nodes and sink node.
3.4.2 Data forwarding phase
In this phase source node sends the packets to destination node through next hop nodes.
For packet forwarding source node selects the next hop using path selection factor. Every
relay node selects the next hop based on selection criteria i.e. considering the following
factors: SINR, congestion, node survivability factor and distance to destination node.

3.4.3 Maintenance phase

Each node forwards the data by checking the route selection factor. If value of factor is
below threshold value (threshold is set to 90 % of the previous round), a route update
request is forwarded to sink node. Sink node sends the maintenance packet to its
neighbour nodes. This phase helps to maintain routing tables with an updated value of
interference, congestion and residual energy level of nodes.

3.5 Algorithm
• Step 1: Route Discovery Phase
– Sink creates Route discovery packet
– Store the value in route discovery packet as
• Distance =0 (distance between sink and current node)
• Congestion=0 (Congestion information of current node)
• A_value=0 (Minimum residual energy of node along path towards sink)
• Cost_value=0 (Total energy required for a packet to reach sink node)
• SINR=0 (SINR information of current node)
– Sink broadcasts the route discovery packet to its 1 hop neighbors
– If current node is source node, then do not forward packet
– Intermediate nodes follow step2 upon receiving route discovery packet
• Step 2:
• If
RT doesn’t contain entry for path then
– Create new entry in routing table and store values
– Call step 3 for interest packet update
– Forward to 1 hop neighbours
• Else if
 – PSF calculated from packet > PSF from RT then
– Update the fields in RT using new packet
• End if
• Step 3: Update Interest packet
• Source address field in packet =current node
• If
– Residual energy of current node <A_value in packet
– A_value= current node’s residual energy
• Else
– Retain the value in packet
• End if
– Add communication cost from previous node to current node
– Get SINR and congestion values from Physical layer of current node and store it
in packet
– Add distance between current node and sink node.
• Step 4:Data Forwarding phase
– Data communication starts when interest packet reaches source node
– Selects the path with highest PSF (path selection factor) from RT.
– Forward data to next hop node
– Intermediate nodes calculate the PSF of their next hop neighbors and forward data
to node which ah highest PSF value.
– Until it reaches the destination.

3.6 Flow Chart

Figure 3.3: Flow Chart
4 Simulation Results
4.1 Network Simulator
Network simulator models the network behavior by calculating the interconnection between
network devices like nodes, routers, switches and access points etc. Most of the simulators
perform discrete event based simulations. Different environmental attributes can be changed to
investigate that how a network would perform under certain conditions.

4.1.1 OMNet++
OMNet++ is a component based, modular and C++ based library for making network simulators.
A Network can be on-chip network, wired, wireless communication network and so on. Model
frameworks are independent projects, developed to provide a domain specific functionality, for
such as sensor networks, ad-hoc networks, optical networks, internet protocols and so on.

OMNet++ provides hierarchical modular architecture. Modules are composed of components

that are programmed in C++ language. Components are combined to form more complex models
using NED (network description) language.

Countless models and frameworks have been developed by researchers working in diverse areas:
wireless networks, Ad-hoc Networks, wireless sensor networks, vehicular networks, media
streaming, cloud computing, mesh networks and more [44].

The INET framework can be thought of as standard open source library for protocol model in
OMNet++ simulation environment. INET framework is useful for designing and validating a
new protocol and exploring new scenarios. It contains models for internet stack, wired and
wireless protocols, supports mobility and several other protocols, application models and
components. Researchers can use the model frameworks through OMNet++ to build their own
simulations [45].

4.2 Simulation results and discussion

In this section Different simulation scenarios are described and results from simulations are
discussed. Simulations carried out in OMNet++ INET frame work. The proposed algorithm is
compared to DD [46] and SPR [3]. The proposed technique is gradient based routing, like
Directed diffusion, uses the local information on the nodes along the path towards the destination
node.SPR is a technique that improves the network throughout and improve packet reception. It
uses a path selection criteria for data routing based on congestion at the physical layer,
interference and path survivability factor which is ratio of minimum residual energy to the total
energy cost of the path.

In our algorithm, we add the distance information also in route selection criteria to reduce the
energy consumption. We consider the distance between the next hop and the destination node to
select a shorter path, as the energy depends on the distance.

Network nodes are randomly deployed in a 100 x 100 meter 2D space. Figure 4.1 shows the
sensor network with random topology in OMNet++ INET framework.

Figure 4.1: Simulation scenario in OMNet ++ INET

Simulations are done by increasing the source nodes in network. Source nodes transmit the data
simultaneously and their number is increased up to ten% of total sensor nodes in the network.
Simulation parameters are mentioned in the table 4.1.

Table: 4.1 Simulation parameters

Parameters Value
Network Area (in meters) 100 x 100
Number of nodes 50
Transmission Range 10m
Initial Energy 100 J

50 nJ/bit

10 pJ/bit/m^2

Cycle time 10 sec

Packet size 50 Bytes

Data rate 4 kbps

MAC Protocol IEEE 802.15.4

To prolong the network sustainability, nodes in the network needs to keep their energy levels in
the same range. Figure 4.2 shows the residual energy of nodes in network for proposed technique
compared with SPR and Directed Diffusion protocol. Source nodes forward their data packets to
sink node at the rate of 10 packets per second. Energy level of nodes is compared after 10 rounds
of data transfer between source and sink node. It’s clear from the figure that nodes have uneven
energy levels in case of Directed diffusion and SPR, whereas in the proposed technique the
residual energy levels are almost in the same range. During the data forwarding relay nodes
check their energy levels if it is below threshold then it reorders the route and updates the path
metrics, which helps to keep the nodes battery level in same range to sustain the network
connectivity for a long time. Figure 4.3 shows more number of nodes with energy above
threshold level for our technique than the others.
Figure 4.2: Remaining Energy level of nodes.
 Figure4.3
: Nodes with remaining energy above threshold

Figure 4.4 shows the packet delivery ratio of our proposed algorithm compared with Directed
Diffussion and SPR routing technique. Simulations with differenrt number of source nodes are
done. Increasing the source nodes increases the simultaneous transmissions which affects the
packet delivery ratio in the network. However our algorithm works better than the other two
protocols. More number of soucre nodes can cause interference and congestion on the relay
nodes which need to be coniderd for routing. Along with these metrics, distance is also an
important factor for route selection which affects the the node energy . Our algorithm considers
all these factors to select the best node for data forwarding.
 Figure 4.4: Packet delivery ratio comparison

Figure 4.5 shows the network throughput comparison. We have measured the network
throughput in bytes per second. If any algorithm works better in terms of packet delivery then it
can have a higher network throughput. Figure shows that our technique outperforms the other
protocols in throughput.
 Figure 4.5: Network Throughput

Average packet drop rate comparison shown in Figure 4.6 between three techniques at
decreasing traffic load. To decrease the traffic load, we increase the time interval between
successive packets. Packet drop rate decreases with less traffic load. Interference and congestion
are the main factors which affect the packet drop. More traffic means more interference and
congestion on the relay nodes, which in turn increase the packet drop rate.
 Figure 4.6: Avg. Packet drop rate with decreasing traffic load

Network throughput for different values of and shown in figure 4.7.

Figure 4.7: Throughput at different values of and l.

Different simulations carried out at increasing simultaneous transmissions. When there is less

transmission in the network, curve is almost straight which means change in and l values
do not make significant difference on network throughput. There is a notable difference in
network throughput when we increase the simultaneous transmissions. Curves have the peak

point when and l have the same weight i.e. all the four variables have ¼ value.

Table: 4.2 and l values

Quadruplet l

1 0 0 0 1
2 0 0 1 0
3 0 1 0 0
4 1 0 0 0
5 1/4 1/4 1/4 1/4
6 1/2 1/2 0 0
7 0 1/2 1/2 0
8 0 0 1/2 1/2
9 1//2 0 0 1/2
10 1/3 0 1/3 1/3
11 1/3 1/3 0 1/3
12 1/3 1/3 1/3 0
13 0 1/3 1/3 1/3

Table 4.2

Packet delivery ratio comparison for different values of and l shown in figure 4.8. Packet
delivery ratio is more when there is only one transmission in the network; throughput depends on
traffic so it’s double for these curves. When the source nodes are increased packet delivery ratio
is reduced. In this case we have higher values when all the variables are of same weight.
Figure 4.8: Packet Delivery Ratio at different values of and l.
5 Conclusion and future work
5.1 Conclusion
The idea of this research project is to evaluate multiple factors which can affect the route
selection. We have implemented our algorithm to investigate the affect of multiple factors in
routing process of wireless sensor networks using OMNet++ based INET framework.

As the multiple sensor nodes are communicating in a wireless medium using radio transceivers
to transmit and receive data packets. It is the most common topology in WSNs, when multiple
nodes send their data to destination node simultaneously. In this scenario it is possible to make
interference and congestion on nodes due to multiple simultaneous transmissions. So the next
hop selection criteria should consider these factors in selecting next hop node. Along with these
factors there are other factors for path selection which affect the data routing. Remaining node
energy and distance also play an important role in data forwarding process. Three main tasks that
consume energy in sensor nodes are, sensing, processing and communication. Communication is
the most energy consuming factor of these three and energy dissipation is also dependent on the
distance.

The simulation results show that our proposed algorithm works better than the previous protocols
for high network traffic, in terms of lesser energy consumption, packet delivery ratio and
network throughput. More residual node energy means an increase in the network lifetime.

Proposed algorithm has 13% lesser packet drop rate when network traffic is changed by
changing time interval between the packets transmission.

Compared to Directed Diffusion it has 18% improved network throughput and 23% increase in
packet delivery ratio when the 10% of the nodes are source nodes. When compared to SPR it has
10% better PDR (packet delivery ratio) and 14% improved network throughput.

Results show that our technique works better in a high traffic environment with multiple source
single sink topology. It selects the more reliable path to improve packet delivery and sustain
network connectivity.
5.2 Future Work

This work implements an energy efficient algorithm for wireless sensor networks with
static nodes. This scheme provided the gains in terms of energy efficiency, network
throughput and packet delivery ratio. Since the node mobility was not considered in this
work, so this algorithm needs to be implemented with mobiles nodes in WSN. We
implemented this work with multi hop routing, data aggregation and clustering technique
can be evaluated for the same network. The effect of lager node density with
heterogeneous nodes needs to be explored.
 Bibliography
[1] B. Bhushan and G. Sahoo, "A comprehensive survey of secure and energy efficient routing
protocols and data collection approaches in wireless sensor networks," in Signal Processing
and Communication (ICSPC), 2017 International Conference on, 2017, pp. 294-299.
[2] I. F. Akyildiz, W. Su, Y. Sankarasubramaniam, and E. Cayirci, "A survey on sensor networks,"
IEEE Communications magazine, vol. 40, pp. 102-114, 2002.
[3] M. Elappila, S. Chinara, and D. R. Parhi, "Survivable path routing in WSN for IoT applications,"
Pervasive and Mobile Computing, vol. 43, pp. 49-63, 2018.
[4] A. Ghaffari, "Congestion control mechanisms in wireless sensor networks: A survey," Journal
of network and computer applications, vol. 52, pp. 101-115, 2015.
[5] B. Bhushan and G. Sahoo, "Routing Protocols in Wireless Sensor Networks," in Computational
Intelligence in Sensor Networks, ed: Springer, 2019, pp. 215-248.
[6] N. A. Pantazis, S. A. Nikolidakis, and D. D. Vergados, "Energy-efficient routing protocols in
wireless sensor networks: A survey," IEEE Communications surveys & tutorials, vol. 15, pp.
551-591, 2013.
[7] G. Anastasi, M. Conti, M. Di Francesco, and A. Passarella, "Energy conservation in wireless
sensor networks: A survey," Ad hoc networks, vol. 7, pp. 537-568, 2009.
[8] M. El-Aaasser and M. Ashour, "Energy aware classification for wireless sensor networks
routing," in 2013 15th International Conference on Advanced Communications Technology
(ICACT), 2013, pp. 66-71.
[9] W. R. Heinzelman, J. Kulik, and H. Balakrishnan, "Adaptive protocols for information
dissemination in wireless sensor networks," presented at the Proceedings of the 5th annual
ACM/IEEE international conference on Mobile computing and networking, Seattle,
Washington, USA, 1999.
[10] C. Intanagonwiwat, R. Govindan, and D. Estrin, "Directed diffusion: a scalable and robust
communication paradigm for sensor networks," presented at the Proceedings of the 6th
annual international conference on Mobile computing and networking, Boston,
Massachusetts, USA, 2000.
[11] J. Kulik, W. Heinzelman, and H. Balakrishnan, "Negotiation-based protocols for disseminating
information in wireless sensor networks," Wirel. Netw., vol. 8, pp. 169-185, 2002.
[12] D. Braginsky and D. Estrin, "Rumor routing algorthim for sensor networks," in Proceedings of
the 1st ACM international workshop on Wireless sensor networks and applications, 2002, pp.
22-31.
[13] S. Lindsey and C. S. Raghavendra, "PEGASIS: Power-efficient gathering in sensor information
systems," in Proceedings, IEEE aerospace conference, 2002, pp. 3-3.
[14] A. Kumar, H. Y. Shwe, K. J. Wong, and P. Chong, "Location-based routing protocols for wireless
sensor networks: A survey," Wireless Sensor Network, vol. 9, pp. 25-72, 2017.
[15] Y. Yu, R. Govindan, and D. Estrin, "Geographical and energy aware routing: A recursive data
dissemination protocol for wireless sensor networks," 2001.
[16] J. Grover, S. Sharma, and M. Sharma, "A Study of Geographic Adaptive Fidelity Routing
Protocol in Wireless Sensor Network," IOSR Journal of Computer Engineering (IOSR-JCE), vol.
16, pp. 88-96, 2014.
[17] P. Minet, "Energy efficient routing," Ad Hoc and Sensor Wireless Networks: Architectures:
Algorithms and Protocols, 2009.
[18] R. Soua and P. Minet, "A survey on energy efficient techniques in wireless sensor networks,"
in 2011 4th Joint IFIP Wireless and Mobile Networking Conference (WMNC 2011), 2011, pp. 1-
 9.
[19] T. Rault, A. Bouabdallah, and Y. Challal, "Energy efficiency in wireless sensor networks: A top-
down survey," Computer Networks, vol. 67, pp. 104-122, 2014.
[20] R. Rajagopalan and P. K. Varshney, "Data aggregation techniques in sensor networks: A
survey," 2006.
[21] Z. Yan, V. Subbaraju, D. Chakraborty, A. Misra, and K. Aberer, "Energy-efficient continuous
activity recognition on mobile phones: An activity-adaptive approach," in 2012 16th
international symposium on wearable computers, 2012, pp. 17-24.
[22] S. G. El-Esawy, N. M. Elshennawy, and N. A. Elfishawy, "An Improved Energy-Efficient Directed
Diffusion Routing Protocol for Wireless Sensor Network," in 2018 14th International Computer
Engineering Conference (ICENCO), 2018, pp. 64-67.
[23] J. Luo, J. Hu, D. Wu, and R. Li, "Opportunistic routing algorithm for relay node selection in
wireless sensor networks," IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics, vol. 11, pp. 112-121,
2015.
[24] J. Luo, D. Wu, C. Pan, and J. Zha, "Optimal energy strategy for node selection and data relay in
WSN-based IoT," Mobile Networks and Applications, vol. 20, pp. 169-180, 2015.
[25] S. Sharma, P. Agarwal, and S. K. Jena, "EAMRP: energy aware multipath routing protocol for
wireless sensor networks," International Journal of Information and Communication
Technology, vol. 8, pp. 235-248, 2016.
[26] F. Li and L. Wang, "Energy-Aware Routing Algorithm for Wireless Sensor Networks with
Optimal Relay Detecting," Wireless Personal Communications, vol. 98, pp. 1701-1717, 2018.
[27] S. Biswas, R. Das, and P. Chatterjee, "Energy-Efficient Connected Target Coverage in Multi-hop
Wireless Sensor Networks," in Industry Interactive Innovations in Science, Engineering and
Technology, ed: Springer, 2018, pp. 411-421.
[28] S. Sharma, D. Puthal, S. K. Jena, A. Y. Zomaya, and R. Ranjan, "Rendezvous based routing
protocol for wireless sensor networks with mobile sink," The Journal of Supercomputing, vol.
73, pp. 1168-1188, 2017.
[29] T. M. Rajeh, A. I. Saleh, and L. M. Labib, "A New Cooperative Balancing Routing (CBR) Protocol
to Enhance the Lifetime of Wireless Sensor Networks," Wireless Personal Communications,
vol. 98, pp. 2623-2656, 2018.
[30] D. Sun, X. Huang, Y. Liu, and H. Zhong, "Predictable energy aware routing based on dynamic
game theory in wireless sensor networks," Computers & Electrical Engineering, vol. 39, pp.
1601-1608, 2013.
[31] N. T. T. Hang, N. C. Trinh, and N. T. Ban, "Energy aware event driven routing protocol and
dynamic delivering scheme for multievent wireless sensor network," in 2018 2nd International
Conference on Recent Advances in Signal Processing, Telecommunications & Computing
(SigTelCom), 2018, pp. 224-229.
[32] A. Khan, N. Javaid, A. Sher, R. A. Abbasi, Z. Ahmad, and W. Ahmed, "Load Balancing and
Collision Avoidance Using Opportunistic Routing in Wireless Sensor Networks," in 2018 IEEE
32nd International Conference on Advanced Information Networking and Applications (AINA),
2018, pp. 236-243.
[33] M. Hasnain, M. H. Malik, and M. E. Aydin, "An adaptive opportunistic routing scheme for
reliable data delivery in WSNs," in Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Future
Networks and Distributed Systems, 2018, p. 32.
[34] S. Bhattacharjee and S. Bandyopadhyay, "An Energy Efficient-Delay Aware Routing Algorithm
in Multihop Wireless Sensor Networks," Adhoc & Sensor Wireless Networks, vol. 43, 2019.
[35] M. Gholipour, A. T. Haghighat, and M. R. Meybodi, "Hop-by-hop traffic-aware routing to
congestion control in wireless sensor networks," EURASIP Journal on Wireless
 Communications and Networking, vol. 2015, p. 15, 2015.
[36] A. M. Ahmed and R. Paulus, "Congestion detection technique for multipath routing and load
balancing in WSN," Wireless Networks, vol. 23, pp. 881-888, 2017.
[37] M. Omidvar, V. Ayatollahitafti, and M. Farahmand, "A Congestion-Aware Routing Algorithms
Based on Traffic Priority in Wireless Sensor Networks," Journal of Soft Computing and Decision
Support Systems, vol. 4, pp. 1-6, 2017.
[38] M. U. Ghazi, S. S. H. Naqvi, K. Yamin, and O. Humayun, "Congestion-Aware Routing Algorithm
Based on Traffic Priority in Wireless Sensor Networks," in 2018 15th International Conference
on Smart Cities: Improving Quality of Life Using ICT & IoT (HONET-ICT), 2018, pp. 112-116.
[39] A. M. Ahmed and R. Paulus, "Energy and interference aware multipath routing for load
balancing in wireless sensor network," International Journal of Mobile Network Design and
Innovation, vol. 6, pp. 228-235, 2016.
[40] S. Aswale and V. R. Ghorpade, "Geographic Multipath Routing based on Triangle Link Quality
Metric with Minimum Inter-path Interference for Wireless Multimedia Sensor Networks,"
Journal of King Saud University-Computer and Information Sciences, 2018.
[41] K. M. Awan, N. Ashraf, M. Q. Saleem, O. E. Sheta, K. N. Qureshi, A. Zeb, et al., "A priority-
based congestion-avoidance routing protocol using IoT-based heterogeneous medical sensors
for energy efficiency in healthcare wireless body area networks," International Journal of
Distributed Sensor Networks, vol. 15, p. 1550147719853980, 2019.
[42] M. Tao, D. Lu, and J. Yang, "An adaptive energy-aware multi-path routing protocol with load
balance for wireless sensor networks," Wireless Personal Communications, vol. 63, pp. 823-
846, 2012.
[43] T.-Y. Chen, H.-W. Wei, C.-R. Lee, F.-N. Huang, T.-S. HSU, and W.-K. Shih, "Energy efficient
geographic routing algorithms in wireless sensor network," Journal of Interconnection
Networks, vol. 14, p. 1350001, 2013.
[44] OMNet++. Available: https://omnetpp.org/intro/
[45] INETframework. Available: https://inet.omnetpp.org/
[46] C. Intanagonwiwat, R. Govindan, and D. Estrin, "Directed diffusion: A scalable and robust
communication paradigm for sensor networks," in Proceedings of the 6th annual international
conference on Mobile computing and networking, 2000, pp. 56-67.