EMRP: Energy-Aware Mesh Routing Protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) requires robust but simple, scalable, energy efficient and also self-configurable routing algorithms due to limited power of sensor nodes that are distributed in a large geographical area. Recent research shows that cluster-based routing has many advantages in increasing network performance. ARPEES, OEDSR, HPEQ are such efficient cluster-based routing protocols, however they all create only one optimal route from data source to the base station (BS) and this route can be broken when the power of sensor nodes are extremely negligible. In this paper, we propose a multipath solution for event-driven cluster-based routing in WSN called Energy-Aware Mesh Routing Protocol (EMRP) with main design features: reliable data transmission, load balance and energy efficiency. In addition, by using the residual energy as main parameter for dynamically switching between two alternative paths, EMRP can be also deployed for purpose of virtualization of WSN. The simulation results show that our solution achieves better performance than other event-driven cluster-based routing protocols.