SN-MPR: A Multi-Point Relay Based Routing Protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) are applicable in vast range of applications and depending on the application the sink could be mobile or stationary. Sink mobility has been shown to improve network lifetimes [1], however mobile sink has to periodically update network about its changing position. This control traffic is non-negligible for low power, limited capacity sensors and induces energy consumption problem in a wireless sensor network. Designing efficient broadcast techniques which ensure network wide updates with minimum overhead is an utmost necessity. This work proposes a distributed sink location update and a tree-based data gathering mechanism for mobile sink WSNs called SN-MPR. This mechanism uses a Multi-Point Relay (MPR) forwarding [2] for sink location updates and queries. The scope of the MPR broadcast based sink location updates is dynamically controlled by sensor nodes whereby sensor nodes forward a new sink update messages only if sink mobility has affected their path towards the sink. Simulation results show that SN-MPR reduces energy consumption of the network without affecting data dissemination efficiency.