A Fault-Tolerant Algorithm of Wireless Sensor Network Based on Recoverable Nodes

In wireless sensor networks, the node faults often occurred in scenes because of severe disturbance, harsh environment and inherent weakness of the networks. In this paper, a fault tolerance directed diffusion protocol, termed fault-tolerant algorithm with recoverable nodes (FTA-RN), is proposed to extend the lifetime of the wireless sensor network based on recoverable host nodes, in which a heartbeat detection algorithm is applied to detect node failure. In FTA-RN, each recoverable intermediate node has a redundant node for fault tolerant function to increase the rate of successful data reception. The nodes are designed based on a kind of recoverable model to prevent the disadvantage of nodes instantaneous fault. Moreover, the energy of host nodes can be used efficiently in recovering model. The simulation result shows that more messages can be received on the sink node using FTA-RN compared with the traditional DD protocol in tolerable amount of delay time and energy consumption, and the lifetime of wireless sensor network in FTA-RN are remarkable longer than traditional DD protocol because of the effect of backup nodes and recoverable host nodes.