An on demand load balancing multi-path routing protocol for differentiated services in MWSN

As an important part of the Internet of Things, mobile wireless sensor network (MWSN) will generate traffic with different service quality requirements due to the multi-sensor integration of nodes and application diversity. Due to the topological changes, resource constraints and self-organizing characteristics of MWSN, the Per-Hop Behavior (PHB) approach in the traditional Diff-Serv model has many challenges in providing differential service. In this paper, a path reservation multipath routing (PRMR) protocol is proposed, which can provide a suitable path for each type of traffic with service requirements. PRMR protocol includes path discovery algorithm and packet scheduling algorithm. In addition, the path scheduling model and scheduling algorithm in PRMR solve the problem of load imbalance among reserved paths caused by different types of traffic. In scenarios with different number of nodes, three types of traffic, integrity sensitive data, delay sensitive data and normal data, are used to verify the performance of PRMR differential service and load balancing. Simulation experiments not only compare the quality of service provided by each reserved path in PRMR, but also compare the differential service performance between PRMR and several multipath routing algorithms. Simulation results show that PRMR routing algorithm can guarantee high packet delivery rate and low delay for integrity-sensitive data and delay-sensitive data, respectively. In addition, the simulation results of the average residual energy index show that the protocol can achieve network energy balance.