RelBAS: Reliable data gathering from border area sensors

Sensor networks deployed for the border area monitoring requires a high degree of reliability for the data gathering in spite of any arbitrary node or sink failures. This paper proposes RelBAS, a robust data gathering scheme specially designed for the border area network to provide a guaranteed delivery of sensory data. The proposed protocol aims to find out multiple node-disjoint paths to multiple sinks so that the disconnectivity in one path due to a node failure does not disrupt the delivery of data to the sink. The forwarding path selection at every node in RelBAS is based on the combination of three parameters - the hop-count, the residual energy and the number of children for for parent of the corresponding tree. This helps in adapting the protocol to the application requirement depending on the delay, energy efficiency and data aggregation. Moreover, RelBAS is capable of detecting an affected zone due to multiple node failures. The effectiveness of the proposed scheme has been analyzed using the simulation results.