ALBA-R: Load-Balancing around connectivity holes in Wireless Sensor Networks

This paper presents ALBA-R, a protocol for converge casting in wireless sensor networks. ALBA-R features the crosslayer integration of geographic routing with contention-based MAC for relay selection and load balancing (ALBA), as well as a mechanism to detect and route around connectivity holes (Rainbow). ALBA and Rainbow (ALBA-R) together solve the problem of routing around a dead end without overhead-intensive techniques such as graph planarization and face routing. The protocol is localized and distributed, and adapts efficiently to varying traffic and node deployments. We show that ALBA-R significantly outperforms other converge casting protocols and solutions for dealing with connectivity holes, especially in critical traffic conditions and low-density networks. Our results show that ALBA-R is an energy-efficient protocol that achieves remarkable performance in terms of packet delivery ratio and end-to-end latency in different scenarios, thus being suitable for real network