Reliable Data Transmission for Multi-source Multi-sink Wireless Sensor Networks

Multi-source multi-sink wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have got variety of application in areas that need to detect multiple environmental monitored parameters using a single sensor field/network. This type of WSN, beside its limited resources such as energy limitation like any WSNs are, has unique characteristics for instance network congestion, since multiple sensor nodes can send data to multiple/single sink at the same time. Research works on WSNs are not matured and well-developed. There are a number of research issues that are not yet addressed. In particular reliable data transmission is among those that are the decisive and unsolved ones as much as required. In this research work, reliable data transmission is ensured using hop-by-hop(in every hop) loss detection and recovery and it is tested using NS2 simulator. This paper provides 100% reliable data transmission. Reliability is assured by employing hop-by-hop loss detection and recovery using a hybrid of NACK and ACK-based approach. Since NACK-based scheme cannot handle the unique case where all packets in a communication are lost, we used a last single ACK feedback to make the sender sure that all packets are received successfully. The simulation and experimental results show that the new protocols perform well under various conditions and protocol parameter settings.