Large-scale fire rescue in wearable wireless sensor networks: A hole processing and trust value-based mobile adaptive routing algorithm

Advances in wearable technology and the proliferation of wearable devices have led to the rapid development of wearable wireless sensor networks (WWSNs) in the fields of medical monitoring and disaster relief, which have gradually become a key technology for the Internet of Medical Things. This study focused on the safety of rescuers in the event of a large-scale fire and applied a WWSN to monitor and transmit their physiological information. User mobility is a huge problem for routing in a WWSN: the topology changes rapidly and routing should be adjusted accordingly, but node movement can easily fracture links that need to be repaired, which takes time and can cause routing holes. Thus, mainstream routing algorithms are presently unsuitable for fire rescue. To solve the routing hole problem, a hole processing and trust value-based mobile adaptive routing algorithm (MARA) is proposed comprising two parts: location-aided routing for multiple request zones (LAR-MRZ) and route maintenance algorithm based on the trust value (RMA-TV). Simulation results showed that MARA provided an excellent performance in terms of the packet delivery rate and delay and demonstrated good adaptability for a WWSN in a fire scenario.