A mixed-method approach to fault tolerance and management for resilient hierarchical routing

The reliable transmission of information is an inherently difficult and unpredictable task for LEACH-based networks. This is due to their adoption of centralized data exchange points which are expected to deliver data transmission reliability without being compromised by increasingly high rates of energy consumption. Given that this is a goal made more difficult by the constraints intrinsic to WSNs, the hardware deployed, task to be performed and targeted environment, LEACH becomes an increasingly restrictive factor when designing for dependable data delivery. The limited number of fault tolerance measures available to LEACH creates the need for strong and tailored energy efficient fault tolerance methods. This paper therefore proposes a series of simple and low cost functions by which fault detection, tolerance and management may be achieved within a highly constrained implementation of LEACH. The protocol is then tested using a hardware deployment of 49 low cost nodes in order to verify the delivered benefits and costs.