Wireless Networks (2024) 30:6265–6271

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Route optimization to improve QoS in multi-hop wireless sensor

networks
Turki Ali Alghamdi1

Published online: 4 June 2020

Ó Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020

Abstract
The quality of communication between any two users in multi-hop wireless sensor networks directly depends upon the path
selection among the available paths between end-users. The issue of selecting the optimized path from source to a
destination becomes the necessary criteria for effective communication between end-users. The art of work mainly focuses
on the selection of the path which has the best available bandwidth however they do not consider other network parameters
such as distance, energy, the intensity of traffic which plays a critical role in routing. In this paper, an algorithm is
presented for the selection of optimized route from source to destination by considering different network parameters along
with the bandwidth and rank is given to all the available routes from source to destinations per their weights. The paper is
validated using network simulator.

Keywords WSN  Multi-hop network  QoS  Throughput  NS2

1 Introduction destination. As this type of routing will increase the delay

which in turn reduces the throughput because the delay
To route the data packets in wireless sensor network factor directly depends on the link distance between any
(WSN) becomes a challenging job due to its autonomous two nodes. In the current literature, many approaches find
infrastructure, in terms of mobility, different data rates and deficiencies in such routing protocols (i.e. minimum hop
unavailability of links between end-users. In multi-hop count). Couto et al. [1] proposed a model for wireless
wireless sensor networks, the data transmission takes place networks in which the author proved that several shortest
through multiple intermediate nodes until it reaches the paths available between end users have poor packet
destination node. This, in turn, results in multiple paths delivery ratio (PDR), as the loss in radio links is more
between source and destination. So, it is the routing algo- between end-users. ii) High data rate path also may not be
rithm which decides the best available path between end- the optimum solution due to various factors present in the
users. However, the existing approaches either find the path WSN such as distance, energy, the intensity of traffic and
which have least hop count or the path with the high data condition of mobility. Ahmad et al. [2] presented a routing
rate. But both the cases of pathfinding approaches may not technique in which they proved that high data rate path
be the optimum solution between end-users because of the may not be optimum if the variation of distance is more
following reasons i) If the two direct or indirect commu- with respect to bandwidth. However, the authors did not
nication nodes have minimum hop count but have more consider other network parameters (such as intensity of
link distance between end-users, in this case, one has to traffic and energy). This may change the optimum route if
sacrifice the high available data rate path from source to the values of intensity of traffic and energy are not com-
patible with the required time to live of the packet with
respect to the current node.
& Turki Ali Alghamdi In this paper, an optimum path between end users is
taghamdi@[Link]
obtained. Initially a mathematical relationship between all
1
Department of Computer Science, College of Computer and the network parameters is estimated. In the Model
Information Systems, Umm Al-Qura University, Makkah, description 25% weightage is given to each parameter,
Saudi Arabia

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6266 Wireless Networks (2024) 30:6265–6271

which means all the parameters are of equal importance in high during the finalization of the path from source to
the presented model. However, parameter weightage can destination which reduces the packet delivery ratio (PDR)
be changed depending upon their network design. The and increases the packet overhead. Liang et al. [16] pro-
presented network model is validated using network posed an optimized solution of WSN based LEACH rout-
simulator. ing protocol. In this approach the authors used ant colony
The remaining part of the paper is presented as follows. algorithm to choose a cluster head which is close to base
Section 2 represents related work, in Sect. 3 proposed station for receiving and forwarding the packets from
models is being presented. Section 4 discusses the simu- source to destination. However, this protocol may not be
lation results and conclusion of the paper is presented in appropriate if end nodes are far from the source node as it
Sect. 5. will increase the delay which decreases the system per-
formance. Julie. E.G [17]. Presented a protocol to route the
packets for finding the success rate and maximum con-
2 Related work nection rate but the authors did not consider the power
consumption of the cluster which is used for further com-
M. Prutha and K. Sivakumar [3] proposed a technique to munication in between the end nodes. In this paper, a
enhance the energy in WSN for data aggression. In this routing protocol is designed by assigning equal weight to
approach, the authors divided the network into smaller different parameters which plays a critical role in the
areas called clusters. The energy is transferred from one packet transmission from one node to another in the net-
cluster to another cluster by choosing the cluster head node work. Optimized routes from source to destination are
based on an energy parameter. However, this approach obtained based on the ranking which is efficient for com-
reduces the energy by transferring energy from one head to munication in WSNs.
another cluster head. This not only reduces the PDR but
also increases the delay. Zhidong et al. [4] presented a
method in which the authors try to balance the energy 3 Proposed approach
consumption in WSN. However, the algorithm is complex
and increases the delay and reduces throughput. In this approach an optimized routing technique is pre-
Tam et al. [5] presented an approach in which the sented, in which all network parameters are given equal
authors try to optimize the energy using fuzzy and particle weight. Initially a mathematical algorithm is presented and
swarm optimization. However fuzzy technique increases then simulation is being carried using NS2.
the delay which in turn reduces the PDR. Amodu and
Mahmood [6] proposed a routing protocol to optimize 3.1 Explanation and discussion
energy. However, during each transformation from one
cluster head to another, it reduces the energy and discon- To route the packets between end-users hybrid concepts of
nects the next cluster from the previous cluster, as a result, routing are used to reduce the time complexity and delay
it reduces the throughput. It is very difficult to design between them. The proposed approach is used at the net-
routing based on clustering schemes [7], so most of the work layer (NL). The hybrid concept used in this approach
clustering routing protocols for WSN are homogeneous follows the given order for various network parameters.
(e.g. [8–10]). Singh et al. [11] proposed a secure routing Here, to find the optimum route the parameters such as
protocol. However, the approach focuses much on security, distance, the intensity of traffic, bandwidth and energy are
but not on route optimization based on network parameters. selected in such a way that the value of distance and
Tao et al. [12] proposed an approach in which the intensity of traffic is less, whereas bandwidth and the value
malicious node is detected by a secure minimal energy of energy should be more. Lesser the value of the distance
routing protocol based on the trust percentage of the nodes. and intensity of traffic lesser will be the propagation delay
But it may fail when the malicious nodes show the same and energy consumed, this, in turn, reduces the loss of data
character as the legitimate node to gain trust. Godder et al. packets. Hence it is clear that the bandwidth alone cannot
[13] presented an improved QoS routing protocol, in which judge the optimized route between end-users in real-time
they tried to improve the delay parameter when compared applications (e.g. Variable bit rate transmission type of
with AODV protocol. However, this method presents well data).
if the bandwidth is high, but the proposed method fails if The mathematical description and relation between
the bandwidth is low which increases the delay between these four parameters (bandwidth, distance, energy, and
end-users. The authors in [14, 15] proposed an energy- intensity of traffic) are as follows:
efficient routing protocols. However, both the approaches Assume the arrival data rate (DA) of packets ‘DA = n *
have more delay as the complexity of the algorithm is very b’ bits/sec., where ‘n’ represents the bits in a packet and ‘b’

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represents the transmission rate. Table 1 represents the Tenergy ¼ Etp þ Erp þ ðn  1Þ þ Erh ð6Þ
various symbol notations presented in the paper. The
intensity of traffic (IT) is the ratio of input to output data where ‘Etp’ and ‘Erp’ represents the required energy to the
rate and can be represented as node for transmission and reception of data packets
respectively and ‘Erh’ is the energy needed to read the
ID
IT ¼ ð1Þ header of the packet, so to enhance the efficiency of energy
OD ‘ge’ one must maximize the packet reception rate and
or distance product. However, the delivery rate of a packet
‘Dr’ depends on packet reception rate and on the hops
DA
IT ¼ ð2Þ count and can be represented as
TR
nb Dr ¼ p r r  d h ð7Þ
IT ¼ ð3Þ
TR where ‘h’ represents the number of hops and is defined as
The intensity of traffic in a mobile environment can be (Ds  Sd Þ
calculated in terms of the frequency of the packet repre- h¼ ð8Þ
do
sented in [18] as
  As the network is multi-hop, so the total nodal delay is
v equal to Transmission delay ? queuing delay ? propaga-
Rf ¼ E f ð4Þ
v þ Rvc tion delay, where propagation delay can be calculated as
where ‘Rf’ = received frequency of the packet, Ef- ‘PD= d/v’. However, when nodes are mobile the distance
= Emitted frequency of the packet, v = speed of the wave, parameter can be calculated represented in [20] as
and ‘Rvc’ = Radial velocity component. TðS  TR Þ
d¼ *v ð9Þ
For energy calculation, Seda et al. [19] presented a 2
mathematical approach to obtain the efficiency of energy
where ‘TS’ = Time to start a receiving ack. of wireless
‘ge’ and is represented as
medium (assume no queuing delay at the node) and ‘TR’-
Prr  d = Reception time after ack.
ge ¼ ð5Þ
K ðDs Sd Þ S
Transmission delay 0 T0D ¼ ð10Þ
where ‘K’ represents the constant along with total energy ‘ B
Tenergy’ and where ‘S’ = size and ‘B’ = bandwidth and can be
defined as
size of packet Sp
B ¼ ¼ ð11Þ
delivery time of packet Pdt
Table 1 Notations The queuing delay can be calculated represented in [21]
Notation Description as

IT Intensity of traffic dT (n  1Þ
Dqavg ¼ ð12Þ
B The average packet arrival rate 2
TR Transmission rate From the abovediscussion, it is observed that all the four
ID I/P data rate network parameters (i.e. bandwidth, distance, energy, and
OD O/P data rate
Ds Source distance
Sd Sink distance
Table 2 Function and notations
do Optimum distance
prr Reception rate of packet S. No Parameter Notation Vector
D Distance !
1 Bandwidth X Bw = d sd (xi to xn )
PD Propagation delay
2 Distance Y !
TR Transmission delay d = asd (yi to yn )
3 Energy E !
e = dsd (zi to zn )
asd Ascending order
4 Intensity of traffic Q !
dsd Descending order t = asd (qi to qn )

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intensity of traffic) are equally important in wireless net-

works to optimize the path from source to destination.
Table 2 represents the network functions and their
vector notation.
Let ‘N’ be the number of nodes in the WSN. In this
approach, each node is represented as quad which corre-
sponds to the bandwidth, distance, energy and the intensity
of traffic. For the nth node, quad can be represented as
Quad ðnÞ ¼ ½ xn ; yn ; zn ; qn  ð13Þ
Fig. 1 Sample of wireless sensor network
where xn, yn, zn,andqn are the entries in the quad corre-
sponding to the bandwidth, distance, energy, and intensity intensity of the neighboring nodes. For simplicity, we
of traffic respectively. To calculate the weights of each assume the values of four network parameters as given in
node in terms of vector convex combination of all Table 3.
parameters are used as represented below.
 2 3   3.3 Calculation of optimum route
x  B~w  a x  B~w a 
y ~ d 6 b 7 ~ 
7  Quad ¼ y  d b 
Quad ¼~  6 Calculations of the optimum route from source to desti-
z ~ e  c 4 5 z  ~e c 
q ~ t  d q ~ t d nation for Fig. 1 using the proposed model is discussed
here. From the figure, it is observed that ‘S’ is the source
where a, b, c, and d represent the multiplicative factors of node (parent node), A, E and G are the neighboring nodes.
four network parameters in terms of convex combination. As discussed before equal weight is given to all the four
Therefore, the weight of each node can be calculated as network parameters (i.e. 25%) each. As per this proposed
Wt ðnÞ ¼ Wtxn  xðnÞ þ Wtyn  yðnÞ þ Wtzn  zðnÞ model, the priority of the nodes A, E, and G are represented
þ Wtqn  qðnÞ ð14Þ in Table 4.
Therefore, the weight of A, E and G can be calculated
where, Wtxn, Wtyn, Wtzn, and Wtqn are respectively the as:
weights of bandwidth, distance, energy and intensity of
Wt ðAÞ ¼ 2  0:25 þ 3  0:25 þ 2  0:25 þ 3
traffic for ‘ nth’ node. In the proposed approach the net  0:25
weight of the node can be calculated directly, so the node ¼ 2:50
having more weight among all the paths from source to
destination can be chosen as the optimum path. In case of Wt ðEÞ ¼ 1  0:25 þ 2  0:25 þ 3  0:25 þ 2  0:25
failure of the optimum path, the next optimum weighted ¼ 2:00
path can be chosen as the route between end users. Math-
ematically the optimum path can be represented as Wt ðGÞ ¼ 3  0:25 þ 1  0:25 þ 1  0:25 þ 1  0:25
¼ 1:50:
op ¼ dsd of W(n) ð15Þ
However, if any two nodes have equal weight, the pri- From the above calculations it is clear that the weight of
ority will be given to the node having low traffic intensity, Node ‘A’ is more in comparison with other neighboring
as low traffic intensity will save the energy and bandwidth. nodes (i.e. Node E and Node G), hence node ‘A’ will be the
After giving weights to all the paths, ranking is given to optimum route node for further transmission of packets
each of the route such that if the best optimum route fails towards the destination node. Now node ‘A’ is considered
then the next best optimum route is selected for commu- to be a new parent node and node ‘E’ is the only node
nication between the end-users. available neighboring to ‘A’. Therefore, node ‘E’ is the
next-optimum route node for packet transmission, and it
3.2 Model description will become the parent node. Nodes ‘B’, ‘F’ and ‘H’ are the
neighboring nodes of ‘E’. The prioritization of these nodes
Consider the model of the WSN as depicted in Fig. 1. Node is presented in Table 5.
‘S’ and node ‘D’ represents the source and destination From the table the weight of the nodes ‘B’, ‘F’ and ‘H’
nodes respectively. are 2.50, 2.00 and 1.50 respectively. Here node ‘B’ con-
Apart from these nodes, each node present in the net- sidered to be the optimum route and the next parent node
work has values that represent a set which corresponds to for further transmission. ‘F’ is the only available node in
the link bandwidth, link distance, energy, and the traffic the routing path and will become the new parent node.

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Table 3 Values of network

Node Bandwidth (X) Distance (Y) Energy (Z) Intensity of traffic (Q)
parameters in Fig. 1
A 2 2 3 0.4
B 2 2 2 0.4
C 2 2 3 0.3
D 1 1 4 0.4
E 1 3 4 0.5
F 1 3 5 0.5
G 4 5 2 0.6
H 4 5 1 0.6
I 4 5 2 0.6

Table 4 Prioritization of network parameters when S is The Source From the node ‘C’ the packets are transmitted to desti-
Node nation node ‘D’ as it is the only node available. Therefore,
Parameters Priority 1 Priority 2 Priority 3 the optimized route from source to destination is.
Route 1 S ? A ? E ? B ? F ? C ? D.
X G A E However, in case of failure of optimized route one can
Y A E G adopt the next optimized routes (i.e. Route 2 and Route 3).
Z E A G Route 2 S ? E ? F ? C ? D.
Q A E G Route 3 S ? G ? H ? I ? D.
If route 1 fails then route 2 will be selected for data
transfer and if both, route 1 and route 2 fail then the
optimum path to be selected for communication is route
Table 5 Prioritization of network parameters when E is The Source [Link] the above discussion, it is observed that the high
Node data rate path alone cannot decide the optimum path. The
Parameters Priority 1 Priority 2 Priority 3 other network parameters i.e. distance, energy, and inten-
sity of traffic also have an impact on deciding the opti-
X H B F mized route from source to destination.
Y B F H
Z F B H
Q B F H 4 Simulation results

In this section comparative analysis of the presented

approach with the existing approaches (i.e. Amodu [6] and
Nodes ‘D’, ‘C’ and ‘I’ are the neighboring nodes of ‘F’, the Tam [5] as they are recent methods) is being presented.
priority table of these nodes are presented in Table 6 and
the weight of the nodes ‘I’, ‘C’ and ‘D’ are 1.50, 2.25 and Table 7 Simulation environment
2.25 respectively.
Parameters Values
The weight of node ‘C’ and ‘D’ are equal i.e. 2.25, so
node ‘C’ is the optimum node as it has less traffic intensity. Simulation Time 70 s
Nodes 1–250
Hops in the network 15
Link Layer Type Logical link (LL)
Table 6 Prioritization of network parameters when F is The Source
Node MAC type 802.11
Type of Propagation Two-ray ground reflection
Parameters Priority 1 Priority 2 Priority 3
Type of queue Drop-tail
X I C D Antenna type Omnidirectional
Y D C I Type of Traffic VBR
Z D C I Area of the Network 1500 m 9 1500 m
Q C D I Size of the Packet 512 bytes

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Fig. 4 Delay vs. simulation time

Fig. 2 Variations of PDR with respect to simulation time

the existing approaches as there is no need foracknowl-
edgment each time which reduces the delay.
Table 7 shows the parameters of the simulation environ-
From the simulation results, the presented approach
ment. Figure 2 represents the variation of PDR with respect
performs better than the conventional approaches with
to the simulation time. From the figure, it is observed that
respect to the output parameters such as PDR, overhead
the PDR of the proposed approach is better than the other
and delay which are most important for efficient commu-
two approaches it is because the routing is done keeping in
nication in WSNs. For simplicity two recent existing
view the importance of all the parameters and an optimized
approaches are used for comparison with the proposed
route from source to destination is selected which improves
approach.
the PDR.
Figure 3 shows the variation of packet overhead with
respect to the number of hops. The figure depicts that
5 Conclusion
initially, the presented approach shows more overhead in
comparison with Tam approach, the reason behind this is;
A hybrid model of route optimization is presented, which
at the initial stage source node wait for the acknowledge-
improves the quality of service in a multi-hop wireless
ment which take little more time to select the optimum
sensor network. The presented approach is simple and
node however, in the next-hop all the required neighboring
much effective in a real-time application, which confirms
nodes information is present in the header of the (selected)
that the quality of service routing not only depend on high
optimum node which does not required any acknowledg-
data rate path, but also on the other network parameters
ment, so this reduces the packet overhead and improves the
such as energy, distance, and intensity of the traffic. The
packet delivery ratio and reduces the overhead.
presented approach finds extensive use in multi-hop wire-
Figure 4 represents the variation of delay with respect to
less sensor networks particularly, when the variable bit rate
network simulation time. Here it has been observed that the
of data transmission takes place between the end-users.
delay of the proposed approach is less when compared with
This approach also provides the next optimum path
between end-users, if the first optimum path fails to transfer
data packets due to different failures such as link failure or
failure due to congestion at the node.

Author contributions A simple and effective technique for routing

is designed to improve the QoS in wireless sensor networks. Different
parameters are taken into account instead of considering only a single
parameter which improves the overall system performance.

Funding Not applicable.

Data Availability Not applicable.

Compliance with ethical standards

Fig. 3 Overhead vs. number of hops

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Conflict of interest The author declared that there is no conflict of 12. Tao Yang, Xu, Xiangyang, L. P., Tonghui, Li, & Leina, P.
interest. (2018). A secure routing of wireless sensor networks based on
trust evaluation model. Procedia Computer Science, 131,
1156–1163.
13. Godder, T. K., Hossain, M. M., Rahman, M. M., & Miah, S.
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