Background and Objective: Mobile Wireless Sensor Network (MWSN) is a specialized wireless network made up of large number of mobile sensors, where each sensor is capable of changing its location, relaying data to either the base station or neighbouring nodes. MWSN has emerged as a useful integral part of modern communication systems; however, its major performance challenges are lack of data delivery assurance due to mobility of its sensors, low computational power of its nodes, and some security related issues. Methods: Most of the existing WSN routing protocols are for non-mobile sensors and require considerably high computational power. Thus, not suitable for energy-constraint WSN with mobile sensors. Therefore, there is need for a secure protocol for MWSN with mechanisms that take into account the limited resources of the nodes and dynamism of its nodes’ locations. Results: In this paper, an efficient routing protocol for MWSN is proposed, not to only improve data delivery but to ensure reliability. This protocol is capable of selecting optimal multi-hop route among available routes for the source node and securely hops the data to the destination nodes through intermediary nodes. Formal and informal security analysis of the routing protocol is done to ascertain the required security level of the protocol. In addition, computational cost analysis is done to evaluate the computational cost of the protocol. Conclusion: The analysis results showed that the proposed protocol was secure and required low computational cost.

Mobile wireless sensor network (MWSN), as a backbone of most communication and embedded systems, is characterized by low data delivery as a result of the energy constraint and in‐deterministic movement of the nodes. To select optimal route path for a reliable data routing, protocols need to select neighbouring nodes with low mobility and residual energy parameters along the route. However, obtaining these parameters from the targeted nodes may encourage mischievous nodes to manipulate their energy and mobility parameters in their favor, leading to the selection of non‐optimal route path and/or exposing the network to other attacks. Rather than depending on the targeted nodes for these parameters, they can be accurately and securely obtained by sink node or base station using effective predictive models. However, most of the existing predictive models engaged by MWSN routing protocols either provide only the energy level or mobility factor of the nodes for optimal route path selection. This, therefore, reduces the reliability of the obtained optimal route paths in terms of data delivery. In this article, we propose predictive models for an accurate prediction of mobility and residual energy parameters of nodes in MWSN for efficient route management. The models are simulated on an existing MWSN protocol to determine their performance. The simulation results show that the adoption of these models in the development of routing protocol will not only lead to optimal route paths' selection but also enhance data delivery rate in MWSN.

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