Zone-based routing protocol with mobility consideration for wireless sensor networks

Hierarchical routing and clustering mechanisms in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) help to reduce the energy consumptions and the overhead created when all the sensor nodes in the network are sending information to the central data collection point. Most of the routing and clustering protocols proposed for WSN assume that the nodes are stationary. However, in applications like habitat monitoring or search and rescue, that assumption makes those clustering mechanisms invalid, since the static nature of sensors is not real. In this paper, we propose Zone-based Routing Protocol for Mobile Sensor Networks (ZoroMSN) that considers the design aspects such as mobility of sensors, zones and routes maintenance, information update and communication between sensor nodes. Simulation results show the effectiveness and strengths of the ZoroMSN protocol such as a low routing and mobility overhead, while achieving a good performance in WSN using small zone sizes and sensors with low speed. Simulation results also show that ZoroMSN outperforms existing LEACH-ME and LEACH-M protocols in terms of network lifetime and energy consumptions.