Fault Node Identification and Route Recovery in Distributed Sensor Networks

Abstract: In this paper we propose a fault node recovery algorithm in order to enhance the lifetime of a wireless sensor network when some of the sensor nodes shut down. A wireless sensor network (WSN) often contains hundreds or thousands of sensor nodes equipped with sensing, computing, and communication devices such as short-range communication devices over wireless channels. These nodes may be distributed over a large area. The sensor nodes in WSNs equipped with batteries for their energy source, but it is inconvenient to recharge or replace batteries because of the sudden giving off energy. Hence, maximizing the lifetime of the network through minimizing the energy is an important challenge in WSN. The algorithm is based on the combination of grade diffusion algorithm and the genetic algorithm. In the current approach, a route discovery approach is proposed which reduces amount of power consumption and number of nodes becoming obsolete (dead) will be less as compared to Grade Diffusion algorithm. The proposed algorithm will also determine set of nodes known as “grades” which has two values namely 0 or 1. Each node will become 1 if battery is greater than threshold otherwise it will be 0. This process of finding the set of nodes whose battery power is less than threshold is called Fault Node Determination. The nodes will be replaced with new nodes of same node id this process is called Fault Node Recovery. The FNR algorithm replaces the deactivated sensor nodes and uses more reused routing paths. In the simulation the FNR algorithm reduces the packet loss rate by approximately 97% and reduces the rate of energy consumption by 70-80%.

Keywords: Fault Node Recovery (FNR) algorithm, Genetic algorithm, Grade diffusion algorithm, Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN)