Energy efficient multi-flow routing in mobile Sensor Networks

Controlled mobility is one of the most complex challenges in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN). Only a few routing protocols consider controlled mobility in order to extend the network lifetime. They are all designed to optimize the physical route topology from a source to a destination. However, there is often more than one sensor which reports an event to the sink in WSN. In existing solutions, this leads to oscillation of nodes which belong to different routes and their premature death. Experiments show that the need of a routing path merge solution is high. As a response we propose the first routing protocol which locates and uses paths crossing to adapt the topology to the network traffic in a fully localized way while still optimizing energy efficiency. Furthermore the protocol makes the intersection to move away from the destination, getting closer to the sources, allowing higher data aggregation and energy saving. Our approach outperforms existing solutions and extends network lifetime up to 37%.