Energy-balanced routing scheme in varying ZigBee networks

As one of the most important restrictions on the application of wireless sensor network, energy consumption is also the main factor which ZigBee specification focuses on. However, current network formation and routing protocols described in ZigBee specification do not fully address power consumption issues. Most of improvements were tested under single network condition so far and the optimization in changing network is still underway. A routing selection strategy based on link failure in varying ZigBee networks is proposed in this paper. The nodes may recognize the mobility changing by utilizing the information in network address and neighbor table without any extra communication. On that basis, proper routing method was chosen. The simulation results show the scheme could reduce the node average power cost. Trying to avoid the possible network segmentations caused by the overuse of some nodes, a balancing algorithm was also proposed. By simulation, it is indicated that the low battery devices could less their power consumption.