Energy-efficient directional routing between partitioned actors in wireless sensor and actor networks

Abstract

Actor-actor communication is an important part of the functioning of wireless sensor-actor networks and enables the actor nodes to take coordinated action on a given event. Owing to various reasons such as actor mobility and low actor density, the actor network tends to get partitioned. The authors propose to use the underlying sensor nodes, which are more densely deployed, to heal these partitions. In order to maximise the utilisation of the limited energy available with the sensor nodes, a new routing protocol for actor-actor communication using directional antennas on the actor nodes is proposed. The authors contribution is threefold. First, using simulations they show that the problem of partitioning in the actor networks is significant and propose an architecture with directional antennas on actor nodes and sensor bridges to heal these partitions. Second, they identify the routing problem for this architecture based on a theoretical framework and propose centralised as well as distributed solutions to it. Third, they develop a routing protocol based on the distributed solution and show, using network simulations, that the proposed protocol not only heals the network partitions successfully, but also achieves high throughput and fairness across different flows, in addition to maximising the network lifetime.

Bridging the gap among actor–sensor–actor communication through load balancing multi-path routing

“…Wireless sensor actor networks (WSANs) are composed of a lot of sensor nodes and the amount of actor nodes [1,2]. WSANs and other wireless network can monitor the environment through sensor nodes, then send these information to corresponding actor nodes; actor nodes can judge, analyze and take action on detection an event [3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14].…”

“…This feature of WSANs also makes it more widely used in environmental monitoring, health monitoring, smart home, animal positioning and tracking, intelligent transportation, precision agriculture, and other civilian areas in the future [15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23]. The wireless-enabled actor nodes are equipped with better processing capabilities, higher transmission powers, and longer battery life, and its resource is rich [1,2]. It is common in WSANs that a large number of sensor nodes [23][24][25][26][27] and a relatively fewer number of actor nodes are deployed in the terrain under monitoring [1][2][3].…”

“…The wireless-enabled actor nodes are equipped with better processing capabilities, higher transmission powers, and longer battery life, and its resource is rich [1,2]. It is common in WSANs that a large number of sensor nodes [23][24][25][26][27] and a relatively fewer number of actor nodes are deployed in the terrain under monitoring [1][2][3]. The number of actor nodes is less due to they are related to the cost.…”

“…Effective sensor-to-actor communication (SAc) and actor-to-actor communication (AAc) are two important issues in WSANs. If the deployment of actor nodes can connect with each other, AAc is not a serious problem [1][2][3]. But if the number of actor nodes deployed in the terrain is not large enough, this causes the actor network topology becomes sparse and achieving effective AAc becomes an important problem [1][2][3].…”

“…If the deployment of actor nodes can connect with each other, AAc is not a serious problem [1][2][3]. But if the number of actor nodes deployed in the terrain is not large enough, this causes the actor network topology becomes sparse and achieving effective AAc becomes an important problem [1][2][3]. In order to heal the partitions in the actor network, using the sensor nodes to support the communication among actors could be a reasonable solution [28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35].…”