DefinePK

Abstract

Wireless sensor network (WSNs) are highly distributed self-organized systems. They rely on significant numbers of scattered low-cost tiny devices featuring strong limitations in terms of processing, memory, communications and energy capabilities. Sensor nodes collect measurements of interest over a given space, making them available to external systems and networks at special nodes designated sink nodes. In order to maximize the autonomy of individual nodes (and consequently the longevity of the network), power saving techniques are commonly implemented, causing nodes to sleep most of the time, complemented with low power communications that usually lead to multi-hop data transmission from sensor nodes to sink nodes and vice versa. While link reliability mechanisms can significantly reduce the end-to-end packet loss ratio, some critical WSN applications require high or even total end-to-end reliability, demanding the use of a reliable transport layer protocol. Therefore, the objective of this research is to develop and implement a reliable data transfer protocol that can provide an excellent reliability to packets from source to destination via hop by hop basis. The effectiveness of the proposed protocol is evaluated with different scenario parameters such as in terms of throughput, node reliability and energy loss in the network. The results show that the proposed protocol (Real-time PSO ) performs much better in terms of throughput, packet loss and energy loss when compared to real time load distribution (RTLD). The Real-time PSO outperforms RTLD of about 30% in terms of packet delivery rate, packet loss and energy loss. This research work has also contributed towards the improvement of network lifetime.