An Efficient Framework and Networking Protocol for Linear Wireless Sensor Networks

This paper presents and evaluates a protocol for linear structure wireless sensor networks which uses a hierarchical addressing scheme designed for this type of networking environments. This linear structure exists in many sensor applications such as monitoring of international borders, roads, rivers, as well as oil, gas, and water pipeline infrastructures. The networking framework and associated protocols are optimized to take advantage of the linear nature of the network to decrease installation, maintenance cost, and energy requirements, in addition to increasing reliability and improving communication efficiency. Furthermore, this paper identifies some special issues and characteristics that are specifically related to this kind of networks. Simulation experiments using the proposed model, addressing scheme and routing protocol were conducted to test and evaluate the network performance under various network conditions.