Connectivity Restoration by Clustering for Mobile Sensor Networks

The Internet of Things relies on wireless sensor networks (WSNs) for sensing the harsh environment, obtaining important data, and transmitting it to a base station for analysis. To overcome the challenges associated with WSNs, the research community worldwide is actively involved. One of the issues being studied and well-thought-out is how to resolve the problem of node failure and how to make the network more energy-efficient. Based on the concept of clustering, the paper proposes a Connectivity Restoration by Clustering (CRC) mechanism for connectivity restoration. Cluster Heads play a significant role in the restoration of connectivity in the proposed technique. It uses a distributed cluster-based approach to identify failed nodes. Moreover, a simple recovery mechanism is utilized during inter-cluster communication for minimizing packet loss. Compared with existing methods for connectivity restoration, CRC efficiently restores connectivity and addresses node failure by moving fewer nodes. Extensive simulations in OMNeT + + based simulator prove that clustering is a highly effective mechanism that can be incorporated into a connectivity restoration technique. CRC outperforms all the considered baseline techniques in terms of multiple performance metrics.