Performance Evaluation Of A Routing Protocol In Wireless Sensor Network

The ability to sense and monitor a variety of environmental conditions using un-tethered sensors offers a significant change over traditional sensing systems that need to be strategically positioned and have topologies engineered. As such, recent research into wireless sensor networks has attracted great interest due to its diversity of applications, ranging in areas such as home, health, environmental and military applications. In this thesis, the evaluation of a routing protocol developed by Crossbow Technologies called XMesh, is presented. The main components of the routing protocol are described and the routing algorithm explained. Experiments were conducted to determine the connectivity ranges of motes in different transmission power settings. The relationship of mote transmission power and network connectivity is presented. An energy efficiency study looked at the means of extending the lifespan of the network. Although, packet losses during the period of a node failure were significant, the routing protocol showed that it was able to adapt and reorganize to provide reliable and stable routing in a network.