A Study on Energy-efficient Self-healing in Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract

One of key issues in the construction of wireless sensor network (WSN) is how efficiently sensor nodes re-subscribe to the network after networking failure. ZigBee has been considered as an attractive solution for the construction of cluster-tree structured WSNs due to its low-power and low-complexity features. However, it may be able to re-subscribes to the network through network rejoining which may require for large signaling overhead and time delay. In this thesis, we consider the design of a cluster-wise self-healing (CS) in a beacon-enabled cluster-tree structured WSN. When a router experience networking failure from its parent node, the proposed CS makes it maintain synchronization with its child nodes, preventing from orphan propagation to its child nodes. Meanwhile, it makes only the orphaned router initiate the re-subscription to the network on behalf of its child nodes. Thus, the proposed CS allows the network re-subscription through one re-subscription process of the orphaned cluster head, significantly reducing the recovery time and energy consumption for the recovery as well. We also design a backup link-aided self-healing (BL) where nodes select a parent node for the network subscription and also a back-up parent node for network re-subscription. The proposed BL can reduce the recovery time since it can minimizes the process for the selection of a new parent node and associated message exchanges for network re-subscription. Computer simulation and experimental results show that the proposed schemes can significantly reduce the energy consumption, recovery time and signaling overhead for network re-subscription.