A Novel QoS Based Routing Protocol for Wireless Actor and Sensor Networks

Wireless actors and sensor networks (WASNs) can be used as powerful and accurate tools for real time monitoring of physical environments subjected to emergency situations. This class of applications poses strict requirements of latency, fault tolerance and delivery reliability. Quality of service (QoS) mechanisms can help to meet those requirements; however, QoS solutions for WASNs still pose challenges compared to QoS solutions for traditional networks. This paper presents QBRP, a novel QoS based routing protocol, which is unique in at least two aspects: it meets, simultaneously, the application requirements for low latency, high delivery reliability, uniform energy consumption and fault tolerance; it takes advantage of the interactions among sensors, actors and sink to provide a better QoS solution for WASNs. Performance evaluation of QBRP shows that it outperforms other QoS mechanisms that also prioritize multipath routing for end-to-end delay differentiation in nearly 50%. QBRP has shown to be a potential solution for the monitoring of physical environments subjected to emergency situations, minimizing risks to lives and patrimony.