Layer Based Energy-balanced Reliable Routing Protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks in Coal Mine

Synthetically considering the special environment underground, we combined the wireless sensor network with the existing cable mine monitoring system, forming a new monitoring system based on Ethernet and WSN, and then we put forward a layer based energy-balanced reliable routing (LBEBR) protocol for WSN to solve the spot problem in zonal area of coal mine and to ensure the reliability of data transmission. The working face was divided into several equal rectangular layers. According to the optimal cluster radius calculated before, different numbers of nodes constituted clusters of different sizes in each layer. In the stage of data transmission, using the reliability evaluation of nodes and considering three factors, the residual energy of nodes, the distance between nodes and the reliability of nodes, to select the best next-hop node. Simulation results show that the protocol can not only balance the energy of the network, but also elude problem nodes effectively to increase the reliability of data transmission.