Improved Virtual Circuit Routing Algorithm for Wireless Sensor Networks under the Aspect of Power Awareness

Abid Ali Minhas, Thomas Trathnigg, Christian Steger, Reinhold Weiß Technische Universität Graz ,Institut für Technische Informatik, Austria {minhas, steger,rweiss}@iti.tu-graz.ac.at [email protected] _____________________________________________________________ Abstract: Routing algorithms have shown their importance in the power aware wireless micro-sensor networks. In this paper first we present virtual circuit algorithm (VCRA), a routing algorithm for wireless sensor networks. We analyze the power utilized by nodes to lengthen the battery life and thus improving the lifetime of wireless sensor network. We discuss VCRA in comparison with the Multihoprouter, an algorithm developed by UC Berkeley. Then we present Improved Virtual Circuit Routing Algorithm (IVCRA) which is an improved form of VCRA. In IVCRA node failure detection and path repairing scheme has been implemented. We also present the energy analysis of IVCRA and prove that IVCRA is the best choice. We first implement our routing algorithms in simulator TOSSIM and then on real hardware of mica2 mote-sensor network platform and prove the reliable routing of the data packets from different nodes to the base station. The motes used as nodes in our mote-sensor network are from Berkeley USA. By using simulator POWERTOSSIM, we estimate and present the energy utilized by different nodes of the network. At the end we present a comparison of our work with the network layer of Zigbee/IEEE 802.15.4, which is an emerging standard for wireless sensor networks and then compare its energy efficiency with the packet size chosen for our algorithm.