Performance study of routing protocols for power data transfer in Wireless Sensor Network

The emerging technology of Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) is being widely used nowadays in the power sector. But real time data monitoring at far away control stations requires energy efficient and very fast data delivery. This work elaborates the different routing protocols which may be utilized for meeting this requirement. Two existing routing protocols namely Open Shortest Path First (OSPF) protocol and Level Based Routing (LBR) protocol have been studied in this work. A model hardware implementation has been done where data from conventional power supply has been measured. The conventional AC power data has been transmitted separately over a distance following OSPF and LBR protocols. The comparison of the obtained data transmission pathways using the different protocols contributes the idea for proper choice of the protocol according to future applications. Proper routing ensures energy efficient data delivery, increase of the node's lifetime and elimination of interferences from the network.

I. Introduction

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) has emerged recently as a new paradigm which performs the function of measurement and monitoring in a collaborative manner. Every independent sensor nodes in the network can collect data and share information with all the other nodes in the network by help of self organizing architectures. This property of the wireless network has enabled WSN to perform the complex tasks of data aggregation, sampling and system monitoring [1]. System health monitoring, environmental monitoring, power data monitoring and control and target tracking in surveillance applications are the various fields where WSN has been implemented [2]. Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS) and Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI) technology based smart sensors have been utilized nowadays with WSNs to develop smart grids [3].