On enhancing network-lifetime in opportunistic Wireless Sensor Networks

Network lifetime has become the key characteristic for evaluating sensor networks in an application-specific way. In this paper, we focus on Mobile Wireless Sensor Networks, which are specific opportunistic networks because of their poor connectivity among the mobile sensors, and thus it is difficult to form a well connected mesh network for transmitting data through end-to-end connections from the sensors to the sink. We propose EXLIOSE (Novel approach to EXtending network LIfetime in Opportunistic SEnsor Networks), a routing protocol that focuses on maximizing network lifetime while keeping high delivery statistics. EXLIOSE is based on a novel routing metric that uses the history of encounters between nodes, and the nodal residual energy. Simulation results show that our approach is able to extend network lifetime and achieve good delivery statistics, as compared to state-of-the-art solutions.