HRVN: A highly reliable forwarding model based on virtual nodes in node-intensive WSNs

Transmission links in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are prone to failure because of breakdown, movement, and energy depletion of nodes. Aiming at node-intensive environment, this paper proposes a highly reliable forwarding model based on virtual nodes (HRVN) in tree-based topology networks. A virtual node (VN) consists of several neighboring physical sensor nodes, which have common parent node and children nodes. Normally, the physical sensor nodes in the same VN forward packets in a load-balancing scheme. When a sensor node in a VN is in failure, the others would take over its forwarding work immediately. Moreover, the internal changes of a VN are transparent to its parent and children nodes. The experiments prove the model can provide load-balance and fast recovery from failure with low cost.