Evaluation of Power-Aware Routing for Sensor Networks with Forwarder Nodes

Wireless sensor networks are envisioned to consist of many small devices that can sense the environment and communicate the data as required. The most critical requirement for widespread sensor networks is power efficiency since battery replacement is not viable. Many protocols attempt to minimize the power consumption by using complex algorithms. However, it is difficult to perform these complex methods since an individual sensor node in sensor networks does not have high computational capacity. On the other hand, many sensor nodes should transfer the data packet to the sink node that collects the required data. Therefore, the operations of the sensor nodes over the route are terminated; it is difficult to deliver the data packet to the sink node even if some sensor nodes are active. In this paper, we propose a simple power-aware routing protocol for sensor networks. Our proposed protocol is based on the ad hoc on-demand distance vector (AODV) protocol, which is one of the reactive routing protocols. In addition, we introduce forwarder nodes in the sensor networks in order to extend the lifetime of the entire sensor network. From the simulation results, we evaluate the performance of the protocols and clarify the effect of forwarder nodes on the sensor networks