A Reliable Communication and Load Balancing Scheme for Resource-Limited Networks

Sensor-cloud infrastructure provides a storage platform for the massive sensed data, that is flexible and re-configurable, for various application areas which are monitored through the resource-limited networks such as wireless sensor networks (WSNs), ad hoc networks, and Internet of things (IoT). Due to their overwhelming characteristics, these networks are used in different application areas to assist human beings in their daily-life activities. However, these networks have different challenging issues such as reliability in communication and processing, storage of the massive data, efficient utilization of on-board battery, maximum lifetime achievement, minimum possible average packet loss ratio, and reliable routing mechanisms. Although various communication and load balancing mechanisms have been proposed in the literature to resolve this issue, however, these schemes are either application specific or overlay complex. In this paper, a reliable communication and load balancing scheme for the resource-limited networks is presented to resolve these issues, particularly with available resources. To achieve these goals, the proposed scheme bounds every sensing device Ci to compute the transmission capabilities of its neighboring devices that is residual energy Er, hop count Hc, round trip time (RTTi), and processing cost. Initially, to guarantee reliable wireless communication, a source device prefers a neighboring device Ci with minimum Hc value over those having maximum Hc values. Moreover, this scheme bounds every device Ci to find four shortest reliable paths and forward maximum packets on two of these paths preferably on the most reliable and optimal route. Therefore, unlike the traditional shortest path scheme, devices Ci reside on these paths do not deplete their on-board battery more rapidly than others. To further improve the reliability of the proposed scheme, the assigned weight-age factors are fine-tuned if one or two of the neighboring devices Ci consume 80% of their on-board battery, that is now maximum weight-age is assigned to the residual energy Er and minimum to Hc value respectively. Simulation results show the exceptional performance of the proposed reliable communication and load balancing scheme against the field-proven schemes in terms of average packet delivery ratio, average throughput, end-to-end delay, and overall network lifetime.