Fault tolerant multi-channel allocation scheme for wireless sensor networks

One of the most common needs in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) is the continuity of network function even in the presence of some node failures. This is called fault tolerance. In general, fault tolerant solutions can be preventive or reactive: the preventive techniques aim to prevent the failure by minimizing and balancing the energy consumption in each node, while the reactive techniques intervene after a failure was detected. In this paper, we propose a new preventive/reactive fault tolerant scheme dedicated to manage the energy consumption and reconnect the WSN in case of articulation node failure. The specificity of this scheme is the use of multichannel communications, allowing simultaneous data transmission, which decreases the interferences between nodes and then decreases data retransmissions. The second task of this scheme targets the reorganization of the network after a network portioning episode. Such episode means that the WSN is partitioned in many segments after an articulation node failure. More precisely, we present here two heuristics for channel allocation/reallocation and WSN reorganization after a network failure. The performances of the proposed scheme is evaluated and proved through simulation.