Network coverage sensitive pseudo geometric broadcast protocols in wireless sensor networks

Due to the deployment limitations of global positioning system (GPS), a pseudo geometric broadcast approach is investigated in resource constrained wireless sensor networks (WSNs). Without relying on the GPS support, a set of nodes closely located in a strategic position is judiciously searched and identified as a forwarding node. In this paper, we first propose both enhanced ad hoc broadcast protocol (AHBP) with target forwarding nodes (EBP(|N_f|)) and node distribution sensitive broadcast (NDS) to maximize the network coverage while minimizing the number of broadcasts. Second, we revisit prior AHBP and approximating neighbor nodes based broadcast protocol (Approx) for investigation in terms of network coverage. For performance comparison study, we modify the AHBP and broadcast protocol for sensor networks (BPS), denoted as BPS*. We conduct extensive simulation experiments using OMNeT++ and analyze the performance of protocols. Extensive simulation results indicate that the proposed EBP(|N_f|) and NDS protocols achieve competitive performance and can be a viable approach in WSNs.