Coverage Hole Aware Data Routing for Mobile Sink Wireless Sensor Networks

In wireless sensor networks (WSNs), the coverage hole problem is one of the challenging problems that needs an effective solution. Data routing protocols in WSNs aim to disseminate the sensors’ data to the central device with the minimum possible network resource usage. However, suppose there is a coverage hole in the middle of the source and destination nodes, and the source node doesn’t have information about the hole. In that case, the data may choose the longer and more repetitive path to reach the destination, increasing resource usage, mainly energy and time. The condition is even more challenging when the network employs a mobile data collector. This paper proposes a Coverage Hole Aware Data Routing (CHADR) protocol for Mobile Sink WSNs that determines the shorter hole bypassing path in advance at the source node using the hole and data collector location information. CHADR evaluates the path efficiency using directional angle and expected hops count. After determining the path, data will be transmitted to the mobile sink using an Opportunistic routing technique. We proved CHADR performance with experimental simulations.