Zone based Energy Efficient Routing Protocol for Mobile

Sensor Networks
Abstract--Mobility in Wireless Sensor Networks makes the sequence number is very old and the intermediate nodes have
technology to be widely used in various applications. Adding this a higher but not the latest destination sequence number,
feature to this energy constrained system provides many thereby having stale entries. Also, multiple Route Reply
advantages but data processing and dissemination becomes
packets in response to a single Route Request packet can lead
difficult. So an extra care needs to be taken to a Mobile sensor
node that routes the information gathered by it to the destination
to heavy control overhead. Another disadvantage of AODV is
and also to increase the Network lifetime. In order to achieve this unnecessary bandwidth consumption due to periodic
we propose a new protocol that functions using the concept of beaconing. ZBR too has its own disadvantages like frequent
clustering which was proposed in “Energy Efficient Zone Based path breakages and retransmission which lead to an
Routing Protocol for Mobile Sensor Networks”. In our protocol unnecessary overhead.
the packets are dynamically forwarded prior to which the control
packet is forwarded dynamically specifies that there exists route The motivation of this research has been to develop a
to the destination node from the source node. Hence the results routing protocol that offer reliability, improved error control
have proven that there is an increase in the network lifetime.
mechanism, better link repair with low overhead in WSNs. A
novel approach is used to derive the routing data in terms of
Keywords- mobility; sensor; routing; clustering
factor that employ the distance between node and base station,
remaining energy and movement of the nodes.
I. INTRODUCTION
Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) is the fast grooving II. RELATED WORK
wireless technique which consists of number of sensor nodes
Active research area in sensor networks include routing,
and a sink (mobile/immobile base station). Sensor nodes are
several proposals have been appeared in literature [1, 9].
capable of sensing or measuring the physical data of the area
These are efficient only for smaller network size and
to be monitored. Then the nodes will aggregate the sensed
stationary nodes [2]. Hierarchical proposal support large
data, store and forward it to the sink through air interface.
networks but requires hierarchical address space. Greedy
Nodes may be scattered in monitoring area or may be mobile
Parameter Stateless Routing [3], Minimum Cost Forwarding
terminal or combination of the two.
Algorithm [4] and Low Energy Adaptive Clustering Hierarchy
offers no support for mobility, however Directed Diffusion
Wireless Sensor Networks offer unique benefits and
[6], Geographical and Energy Aware Routing [12] and
versatility for those locations and applications where human
Geographic Adaptive Fidelity offers a limited support by
interaction is less feasible, examples of which may be to
virtue of their operation and not that they are specifically
monitor volcanoes , movements inside enemy territory, to
designed [2].
count a few. With no prerequisites for fixed infrastructure or
A location based routing protocol for MSN has been proposed
base station, they can be created and used anytime. The
by L. Zou, M. Lu and Z. Xiong in [5]. This protocol uses the
addition and deletion of nodes is easy and sometimes only
concept of greedy forwarding on the basis of a cost function
require dropping a few hundred through a vehicle. These
of each node. Whenever the greedy routing is not possible
advantages of sensor nodes have attracted immediate attention
after a number of hops, the packet is forwarded using the
among military, police, and rescue agencies.
high-cost-to-low-cost rule.
Ahmed and Bashir [1] proposed Energy Efficient Zone Based
A Mobile Sensor Network (MSN) is composed of sensor
Routing Protocol for Mobile Sensor Networks [MSN’s] using
nodes equipped with a mobilizer. Their movement can be
Hierarchical concept .His main objective was to reduce the
random or as per specification of the application or task.
amount of control information produced as result of path
Mobility brings many advance concepts to perception entirely
finding, hence save energy. Using this concept we propose a
shifting the paradigm of research and development. Novel
routing technique that reduces further control information in
approaches are required to address the issues due to
network saving more energy and improving throughput
unpredictable movements of nodes. Frequent movement of
comparatively.
nodes in MSN leads to path breakages. Whenever routing of
information is disrupted due to path breakage it results in loss III. NETWORK SETUP
or delayed delivery of packets which in turn leads to loss of
energy. We need to reroute the data in this case, to avoid a
This section explains the network setup and assumptions
scenario of this sort we use a backup path if available. Many
related to our proposed routing protocol. The network consists
protocols have been proposed for sensor networks, but not all
of mobile and static nodes. The movement of the nodes can be
protocols have proven to be efficient.
completely mobile or application specific. The protocol has no
restriction over movement of nodes.
In our research we consider both AODV and ZBR
All nodes in the network are considered to be
protocols which are designed to conserve energy in wireless
homogenous. The nodes in the network are aware of their
sensor nodes. Both these protocols have their own pros and
location which is updated at periodical intervals. The sink is
cons, to specify a few AODV has many retransmissions that
responsible for dividing the network into fixed size of m x n
intermediate nodes can lead to inconsistent routes if the source
square zones based on the transmission range of the nodes in
the network.
Each zone is governed by single zone head which is
responsible for aggregating and routing the data to the base
station. Each node is aware of its own identifier and zone
identifier.
Fig 1 Architecture of Zone Based Network
IV. PROTOCOL OPERATION
Zone based Energy Efficient routing Protocol (ZEEP) that
is modified version of Zone Based Routing (ZBR) protocol.
This modified version is used as the underlying routing
protocol in the zone based network infrastructure.
The sensor nodes deployed within the phenomena report the
event as soon as any activity is observed in the respective
region. The data flow depends on the specification of
application being used. However the scenarios of the nodes
being static as well as mobile are considered during the
operation. As ZEEP has no limitations regarding the
movements of the nodes, it is very efficient dealing with both
mobile and dense environments.
In ZEEP, the member nodes in a particular zone transmit
data to their respective zone head, which is at a distance of
one hop i.e. in the same zone. Zone head performs the
aggregation based on the specification of the application they
are applied in. The responsibility of the zone head is to
forward the packets to next zone head which is near to the
base station. The protocol includes two major phases.
A. Mobility Factor and Zone Head Selection
Here we explain the concept of mobility factor which is
the core aspect of ZEEP. Each node in the network keeps track
of their mobility factor. This mobility factor is calculated
based on the remaining energy of the node and the number of
zone changes it made at that time. The mobility factor (M.F) is
given as
; e’>0
Where e’ is the remaining energy and Zt is the total
number of Zone changes made during the time‘t’ sec. A lower
value of mobility factor means that the node is less mobile and
more of an eligible candidate for being the zone head. On the
contrary, a higher value depicts frequent movements across
the zones and renders a node inconsistent as a zone head.
Each node broadcasts its M.F to its respective zone head
and the other nodes which receive them discard the packet.
The node having a lesser mobility factor and higher energy
reserve compared to the current zone head is elected as the
latest zone head. The lowest value of M.F indicates that it
remains at the zone head for a longer time. This process is
done at fixed intervals of time.
B. Packet Forwarding
To explain the routing process i.e. the way how the packets
are forwarded, we consider a scenario here with a 3 x 5 grid.
Now the network has 15 zones which are identified uniquely
by its zone ID [0 – 14]. Assuming the base station is in zone
15 and the source node is in zone 1. Each node in the network,
including zone head and base station possesses a unique
identifier and is named as Node ID. Each node will keep track
of its mobility factor; number of zone changes it made, the
zone size, and a zone table as shown in the figure 4.1 below.
This table maps the zone ids and the corresponding locations
to which they are attached and a zone head. A maximum of 10
entries is present in a zone table.
Zone_id Zone X- Zone Y- Zone head
Location Location id
Table 1:Zone table
When a source node is ready to send the data it
initially checks whether it is a zone head or not. If it is not a
zone head it sends a control packet to corresponding zone
head. The control packet format and the reply to control
packet form the base station is shown in the figure 4.2
Fig 2: Control Packet Format
The Packet Type which is of 8-bit will specify whether the
packet is a control packet from the source or it is a reply to the
control packet from destination (base station). The packet id is
responsible for verifying the reply sent by the base station at
the source. This is incremented for every packet sent by the
source. The source id and the source zone id the node id and
the zone id where the packet is originated. The destination id
and the destination zone id the node id and the zone id where
the packet is originated.
The next zone field in the packet is responsible for forwarding
the packet. Whenever a control packet or a reply packet for
the respective control packet is arrived at the zone head, then
the next zone field is analysed near a node which decides
whether to drop a packet or not. When the node decides
whether to send or forward the packet it makes an entry of the
next zone as the zone id of the neighbouring zone id which is
nearest to the destination.
 Data Interval 0.25 s
Routing Protocol ZBRA
Radio Range 250m
Node Velocity 20 m/s
Mobility Static and fully mobile
Transmission Power 0.9W
Receiving power 0.8W
Initial node Energy 100J

Different cases which are considered to measure the

Fig3 Control Packet Flow towards BS performance metrics are listed below when the nodes in the
network is completely static and completely mobile.
In the scenario considered when the packet is
ordinated in zone 1, the next zone will be the neighbouring Table 3 Simulation Environment Cases
zone id which is nearest to the destination i.e. 7. When the
packet received by the zone head in the zone 7 it again Case No. of Nodes in the No. of Data Sending
changes the next zone value to 13 in the control packet and it no. Network Nodes
is forwarded until it reaches the base station. 1 50 1
2 50 10
Once this control packet is received by the base station it 3 100 1
sends acknowledgement back to the source by considering the 4 100 10
distance factor.

1) Energy Consumption:

The CBR flow is not continuous and varies w.r.t time. The
results are considered for all the three protocols in the same
scenario.
The performance metrics is measured in terms of Energy
consumption and Packet Delivery ratio for the environment
shown in Table 1 and Table 2.
Figure 4 Reply Packet flow from BS to Source

Once the acknowledgement is received by the source,

the source starts sending the data. The base station
acknowledges for each and every packet. If the source node
does not receive any acknowledgement for the data packet it
stops sending the data and sends the control packet
periodically until the control packet is delivered. This helps in
maintaining consistent path towards the base station (BS).

V. SIMULATION RESULTS
ZEEP was implemented using Network Simulator version
2 (NS2) and the results are compared with AODV and ZBR
protocol which is also implemented in NS2. Different
scenarios are considered to compare and evaluate the
performance metrics. The evaluation parameters are common
to all the protocols under comparison.

Table 2 Simulation Parameters

Fig 5 Performance analysis based on Energy for 50 static nodes
Parameter Value
Simulation Time 100s
Field Size 500m x 500m
Zone Size 100m x 100m
MAC layer IEEE 802.11
Data packet Length 40bytes

Fig 5 Performance analysis based on Energy for 50 mobile nodes
Fig 6 Performance analysis based on Energy for 100 static nodes
Fig 6 Performance analysis based on Energy for 100 mobile nodes
2) Packet Delivery Ratio: The measured end-to-end successful
transmission probability. This ratio is calculated by the
number of data packets received by the sink divided by
number of data packets produced by the source.
CONCLUSION
In this paper it can be shown the ZEEP protocol has a better
performance compared to AODV protocol. This motivates
examination of the AODV, as many of the protocol semantics
provide little added benefit, under the conditions examined in
this paper.
ZEEP could easily be extended to incorporate optimizations
that are standard in AODV with ease. Another significant
feature of ZEEP is the control packets for route discovery.
Our immeasurable quality of ZEEP is simplicity. As authors of
ZEEP implementations we predict ZEEP would take less than
half the time to program and debug when compared with full
AODV implementation. Making implementation easy is
necessary for wide deployment of the AODV protocol.
For future consideration the security of the system can be an
important topic. This paper did not take into consideration the
issues of node and network security. Since nodes in ZEEP
need to cooperate with each other in order to answer a query,
it is important that they trust each other. Also, since base
stations are the central component of the system, they could
be the target of malicious attacks. For this reason, the
improvement of the security of the system can be
implemented as a future work.
Fig 7 PDR for 50 static nodes with 10 data sending nodes
Fig 8 PDR for 50 Mobile nodes with 10 data sending nodes
Fig 9 PDR for 100 Static nodes with 10 data sending nodes
Fig 10 PDR for 100 Mobile Nodes with 10 data sending nodes
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