Shortest Path Routing Protocol for Multi-layer Mobile Wireless Sensor Networks

A mobile wireless sensor network consisting of a large amount of tiny sensors with low-power can be an effective tool for gathering data in a variety of environments. The data collected by each sensor is transmitted to a single processing center that uses all data to determine characteristics of the environment. Sensors deployed in all kinds of areas on a large scale can move with wind and water. Defining different sensor nodes and routing protocols, we simplify sensor complexity, reduce network cost, and update network topology with low energy consumption. In this paper, we design a three-layer mobile node architecture to organize all the sensors in mobile wireless sensor networks. Based on the new architecture, we propose SP(shortest path) routing protocol to adapt sensors to update the network topology. Simulations show that SP performs as well as LEACH in small-scale wireless sensor networks, however, greatly outperforms in large-scale ones. In addition, SP provides an elegant solution to node movement in multi-layer mobile wireless sensor networks we simulated.