Energy-efficient fault-tolerant routing for wireless sensor networks

The fault-tolerance property is defined by the ability of the network to maintain its functionality without interruption caused by sensor failure. In wireless sensor networks (WSNs), sensor nodes are prone to failures due to various causes: energy depletion, damage due to weather conditions or animals, etc. Moreover, in WSNs, failures caused by depletion of sensor batteries are the most predominant. Hence, the conservation of sensor energy prevents the premature extinction of their batteries, thus increasing the service life of the sensors. To ensure fault-tolerance property in this kind of networks, fault-tolerant protocols use fault recovery algorithms. This mechanism is considered to be an optimistic approach where it is only performed after fault detection; then to avoid breakdowns. Moreover, fault-tolerant routing protocols provide strategies that attempt to delay or avoid any type of failure in order to keep the network functional for as long as possible. In this paper, we propose an energy-efficient cluster-based fault-tolerant routing protocol for WSNs that aims to cover failures before they occur, called EE-FT protocol. EE-FT protocol chooses the shortest reliable paths for routing data to the base station based on Bernoulli's law for selecting reliable nodes. These paths are formed by CHs having more energy. Simulation results show that our proposal provides better performance in terms of network lifetime, end-to-end delay and packet loss rate compared to other protocols.