Sensors, Vol. 18, Pages 1926: A Smart Collaborative Routing Protocol for Reliable Data Diffusion in IoT Scenarios (Sensors)

It is knotty for current routing protocols to meet the needs of reliable data diffusion during the Internet of Things (IoT) deployments. Due to the random placement, limited resources and unattended features of existing sensor nodes, the wireless transmissions are easily exposed to unauthorized users, which becomes a vulnerable area for various malicious attacks, such as wormhole and Sybil attacks. However, the scheme based on geographic location is a suitable candidate to defend against them. This paper is inspired to propose a smart collaborative routing protocol, Geographic energy aware routing and Inspecting Node (GIN), for guaranteeing the reliability of data exchanging. The proposed protocol integrates the directed diffusion routing, Greedy Perimeter Stateless Routing (GPSR), and the inspecting node mechanism. We first discuss current wireless routing protocols from three diverse perspectives (improving transmission rate, shortening transmission range and reducing transmission consumption). Then, the details of GIN, including the model establishment and implementation processes, are presented by means of the theoretical analysis. Through leveraging the game theory, the inspecting node is elected to monitor the network behaviors. Thirdly, we evaluate the network performances, in terms of transmission delay, packet loss ratio, and throughput, between GIN and three traditional schemes (i.e., Flooding, GPSR, and GEAR). The simulation results illustrate that the proposed protocol is able to outperform the others.