A Location Routing Protocol based on Smart Antennas for Wireless Sensor Networks

The task of finding and maintaining routes in a Wireless Sensor Networks is a nontrivial task since energy restrictions and sudden changes in node status (e.g. failure) cause frequent and unpredictable topological changes. This work introduces a novel location routing protocol that uses smart antennas to estimate nodes positions into the network and to deliver information basing routing decisions on neighbor’s status connection and relative position, named LBRA. The main purpose of LBRA is to eliminate network control overhead as much as possible. To achieve this goal, the algorithm employs local position for route decision, implements a novel mechanism to collect the location information and involves only route participants in the synchronization of location information. In addition, the protocol uses node battery information to make power aware routing decisions. In order to asses LBRA a series of simulations were designed with the help of the Network Simulator 2 (ns2). The experiment results showed that LBRA succeed in reducing the control overhead and the routing load, improving the packet delivery rate. Additionally, network power depletion is more balanced, since routing decisions are made depending on nodes’ battery level.