LACAR: Location Aided Congestion Aware Routing in Wireless Sensor Networks

Trade-off between energy-efficiency and reliability in wireless sensor networks is application dependent. Without the reliability, the extended lifetime of a network is of limited use. Due to the inherent correlation between reliability and congestion, it is necessary to reduce congestion to improve reliability. Existing congestion control algorithms in wireless sensor networks are reactive. They attempt to reduce the congestion only after its detection. In this paper, we present Location Aided Congestion Aware Routing (LACAR) protocol that proactively avoids congestion formation and improves data delivery success rate in data gathering wireless sensor networks. Location, energy and congestion information of neighbours together with the location information of the base station determine appropriate routes. Simulation results show that LACAR achieves high packet success rate in an energy-efficient way.