Research Article Open Access

Simplified AODV with Urgent Data Indication (sEAODVu): An Energy Efficient Routing Protocol for Zigbee Network

Abstract

ZigBee is the emerging industrial standard for Ad-hoc wireless networks based on IEEE 802.15.4, having characteristics such as low data rate, low price, and low power consumption. It is widely used in wireless sensor networks for remote monitoring, Home-appliance networks, and industrial automation. It supports tree and mesh routing. A major concern in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) is energy conservation, since battery-powered sensor nodes are expected to operate for a long time (for months or even years). AODV, an on-demand routing protocol is used for ZigBee mesh networks. The high number of control packets, makes AODV unsuitable for certain applications that requires energy efficient communications. A new routing strategy (sEAODV) is proposed here: combination of i) simplified AODV (sAODV): will try to reduce control overhead and hence energy consumption and ii) Energy Aware Mesh Routing (EAODV): to prevent early death of nodes having low energy (less than 10% of its initial energy level) will not forward RREQ messages hence, they will not be a part of communication. The algorithm performance is simulated using NS-2 simulator. Our proposed scheme shows overall performance improvement compared to original AODV in terms of Energy Consumption, Routing Overhead and Number of packet drops. At the end one idea is proposed to indicate emergency/urgent data (fire alarm or sensory data of a patient in ICU) by a flag bit, which forces even the low energy node to deliver the data to the destination node.

Sohil A. Dabhi, Manish K. Patel