An efficient Multi-Parent Hierarchical routing protocol for WSNs

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) nodes are commonly designed to work with limited resources of memory, energy and processing. The routing protocol is one of the key components of WSNs and its features impact network performance significantly. We present an efficient Multi-Parent Hierarchical (MPH) routing protocol for wireless sensor networks; its main goal is to achieve reliable delivery of data in a single sink scenario while keeping low overhead, reduced latency and low energy consumption. The main features of MPH are self-configuration, hierarchical topology, persistence according to link quality, and source routing from sink to nodes. Network performance simulations of the MPH routing protocol are carried out and compared with two popular protocols, AODV, DSR and with the well-known algorithm ZTR (Zigbee Tree Routing). Results show that for the single sink scenario, the MPH protocol has an energy saving of 35% against AODV and DSR protocols and 8% compared with ZTR. MPH has 27% less overhead compared with AODV and DSR. And MPH presents a 10% increase in packet delivery compared with AODV, DSR and ZTR. Finally, we present a real WSN built based on the MPH protocol, which works satisfactorily, providing an experimental demonstration of the capabilities of the protocol.