WSN Based Data Collection Framework and Protocols for Disaster

Mitigation and Rescue Operation

Suman Saha , Mitsuji Matsumoto

GITS, Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan.
suman@asagi.waseda.jp, mmatsumoto@waseda.jp

ABSTRACT
Rapid development of Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) expedites the movement
of ubiquitous computing. Though people can deploy this WSN for disaster
mitigation and rescue operation after disaster, very few research works of WSN
consider about disaster management system. None of the existing works considers
one of the major effects of disaster such as some base stations might be collapsed
or unreachable due to catastrophe. Considering this deficiency, in this paper, a data
collection framework for disaster mitigation is demonstrated. This proposed
framework is designed based on large-scale hybrid networks of cellular networks
and WSNs. Considering the some base stations might be collapsed or unreachable
during or after disaster, in this framework, ARSs are deployed on the border
regions of every cell of cellular system. Sensor nodes of the corresponding cell
disseminate their data to the ARSs and ARSs route the received data to non-
collapsed base stations or nearby ARSs. In addition, in order to disseminate data
from WSN to ARSs, in this paper, a protocol for disaster mitigation is proposed.
This proposed protocol is a clustering and angular based routing protocol. Based
on sensor node residual energy and node centrality, cluster head selection is
performed. Simulation results prove that the performance of proposed protocol in
the proposed framework outperforms those of LEACH and PEGASIS protocol.
Though at first ARS is mentioned in [5], in this paper, the ARS placement strategy
is updated and this update is justified by the simulation results. Furthermore, a
small-scale data collection framework is proposed for rescue operation system
after disaster. The proposed framework for rescue operation considers that rescue
operators or first responders use some portable devices named cnode to collect
data from some particular disaster areas for rescue operation. During rescue
operation, cnode disseminates task over the sensor nodes of the disaster area by
directional antenna to inform the sensor nodes to send their sense data to the cnode.
For energy efficient and lower delay based data routing from these sensor nodes to
cnode, in this paper, a protocol for rescue operation is proposed. Performance
evaluation results prove that the performance of proposed rescue operation
protocol in proposed framework outperforms that of SENDROM [1].

Keywords: Wireless Sensor Network(WSN), Cellular network, ARS(Adhoc Relay

Station), Clustering, Routing.

1 INTRODUCTION Communications Commission) has required to

Our disaster management system is not so
efficient comparing with our rapid development in
communication system. Current communication
systems could meet disaster management needs
sufficiently, as long as communication services are
uninterrupted. However, when these infrastructures
break down, the pipeline for essential information is
cut. A famous example of such a situation occurred
immediately after the Kobe earthquake in 1995 and
the attack on the World Trade Center (WTC) in New
York on September 11, 2001. The FCC (Federal
cellular systems the role for locating the position of a
terminal [10]. To satisfy the requirement, several
technologies have been studied such as the Global
Positioning System (GPS) and so on [10], [11], [12].
However, no system has been demonstrated to
overcome the requirement.
Lots of research works ([2], [3]) use cellular
network as a data gateway to convey data from
disaster location. But almost in every case, after a
catastrophe, rescuers cannot communicate with
survivors due to destruction in an established cellular
network. Main reason is collapsed or unreachable

Ubiquitous Computing and Communication Journal 1

base stations. Best example of this is 2004 Nigata
earthquake in Japan. To overcome these deficiencies,
wireless sensor network can be deployed to make
communications among rescuers and survivors. In
addition, before disaster emergency workers need
varieties of sensing data, as an instance, which can
be applicable in case of tsunami. Because most cases
earthquakes in the ocean areas precede tsunamis. If
emergency workers can get the data of these
earthquakes earlier, according to significant of the
earthquake they can evacuate or warn the people of
coastal region. For data collection from ocean, Under
Water Sensor Network (hereafter, it is denoted as
UWSN) should be considered. Links in underwater
networks are usually based on acoustics wireless
communications [6]. The unique characteristics of
the underwater acoustic communication channel,
such as limited bandwidth capacity and high
propagation delays [6], require very efficient and
reliable data communication protocols. These
limitations make a gap between UWSN and
terrestrial wireless sensor network.
In this paper, the disaster management system is
divided into two subsystems: disaster mitigation and
rescue operation. Here disaster mitigation subsystem
stands for a large-scale heterogeneous system of
WSN, Cellular networks and Ad hoc Relay Station
(ARS)s networks that can be used for 24 hours
disaster surveillances, while rescue operation can
work in a small area for rescue operation after
disaster. Considering both of these subsystems of
disaster management system, a data collection
framework is proposed in this paper. In addition,
based on energy efficiency and lower delay,
protocols for data collection from disaster areas for
disaster mitigation and rescue operation are proposed.
Here proposed data collection framework for disaster
mitigation considers collapsed or unreachable base
stations, which was not regarded as a significant area
in previous works [2], [3], [4]. So in this framework,
static ARSs [5] are placed in bordering areas of cells
for conveying data from collapsed base station areas
to their nearest base stations. Details motivations of
proposed works are discussed in section 2. Though in
proposed framework, UWSN framework is
considered for ocean data collection, proposed WSN
protocols are only for terrestrial WSN. For UWSN,
delay sensitive routing protocol [6] might be a good
choice.
The remainder of the paper is structured as
follows. Section 2 will discuss related works and
their drawbacks briefly. We present a data collection
framework in section 3. Section 4 presents our
proposed protocol for disaster mitigation along with
its performance evaluation. The proposed protocol
for rescue operation and its performance evaluation
is proposed in section 5. In section 6, we conclude
the paper and highlight the possible avenues for
Ubiquitous Computing and Communication Journal
future study.
2 PREVIOUS WORKS
Few research works are for disaster management
([1], [2], [3], [4], [14]). In [1], based on state-of the-
art technologies, sensor network architecture is
developed for rescuer operation after disaster. But
the data dissemination technique is not efficient
because of overall delayed route establishment time
and energy inefficiency. Although a protocol of ad
hoc sensor network for disaster management is
presented in [4] along with its energy efficiency,
which achieved by the combination of a low power
mode algorithm and a power aware routing strategy,
this network is not viable for real world
implementation and its sensor prototype is
expensive. In [2], a location aware distributed sensor
networks is presented, but there is no mention about
hybrid network interface such like sensor and
cellular network interface. Though [3] is defined on
a hybrid of sensor and cellular network, it does not
consider collapsed or unreachable base stations. In
[2], clustering method does not regard energy
efficiency, while in [3], routing and access protocol
for sensor network is not energy efficient though it
can be easily deployable in a cellular network
without considering collapsed base stations.
In this paper, the proposed protocol for disaster
mitigation is a cluster-based protocol. Among the
distributed cluster-based sensor networks protocols,
LEACH [9] is very popular. But clustering technique
used in LEACH wastes energy in terms of long run.
In LEACH, when clusters are created, each node of n
autonomously decides if it will be a cluster head for
the next round. The selection is stochastically: each
node determines a random number between 0 and 1.
If this number is lower than a threshold T(n), the
node becomes a cluster head. T(n) is determined
according to the equation
P (1)
T (n ) =
⎛ 1 ⎞
1 − P × ⎜ r m od ⎟
⎝ P ⎠
for nodes that have not been cluster head in the last
1/P rounds, otherwise T(n) is zero. Here P is an a
priori determined number that determines the
average number of cluster heads during a round, r is
the number of the current round. Using this
algorithm, each node will be a cluster head exactly
once within 1/P rounds. But in long run, there may
be lots of cluster heads in a densely small zone or
there are no cluster heads in a large area of network.
So cluster formation is not uniformly distributed over
the network. Another point LEACH considers the
number of times the node has been a cluster head up
to current round but not energy status of node. For
long run, energy is one of the main factors of every
2
sensor node with limited energy battery.
Among the distributed techniques, Power
Efficient Gathering in Sensor Information Systems
(PEGASIS), a chain-based routing protocol, further
enhances network lifetime among same class
techniques by increasing local collaboration among
sensor nodes [15]. In PEGASIS, nodes are organized
into a chain using a greedy algorithm so that each
node transmits to and receives from only one of its
neighbors. In each round, a randomly chosen node
from the chain will transmit the aggregated data to
the base station, thus reducing the per round energy
expenditure compared to LEACH. But average delay
per round makes PEGASIS an ineligible to disaster
mitigation technique.
Form the discussion of the related works it is
evident that until now there is no large scale WSN
and cellular network based hybrid disaster mitigation
network system, which can consider collapsed or
unreachable base stations. Normally used disaster
management system runs for a short time and for a
small scale, so this does not have to consider energy
scarcity of the sensor network. This type of system is
designed based on only lower data transmission
delay. Due to rapid development of ubiquitous
computing, we can deploy a large-scale disaster
mitigation network that will track disaster
information for a long time. But in this case, energy
efficiency and lower data delay should be considered
in together. To the best of my knowledge, in this
paper, two major factors: energy efficiency and
lower data delay are considered in together for the
first time for the two proposed protocols of disaster
mitigation and rescue operation. Furthermore, the
proposed framework can be easily deployed in real
world cellular network. So, in the proposed
protocols’ part only WSN protocols are considered.
Some researchers have studied a hybrid network for
cellular systems [5], [13], [16], [17]. The objectives
of those systems are to achieve high speed, high
capacity and wide area coverage by way of multi-
hopping. In [5], ad hoc relay station (ARS) is
presented with its way of placement and various air
interfaces, though in this paper ARS placement
strategy is updated.
3 DATA COLLECTION FRAMEWORK
We have already mentioned, our framework of
disaster management system consists of two
subsystems: disaster mitigation and rescue operation.
Former one is a general monitoring system for
disasters’ tracking. For instance, the first sign of
tsunamis is earthquakes in the ocean-areas. If we
know about these earthquakes in real time, we can
evacuate the residents of tsunami prone areas before
the tsunamis taking effect on those areas. Latter
subsystem is for rescue purpose after disaster.
Ubiquitous Computing and Communication Journal
Fig.1 depicts our considered network model.
Right side of the figure presents UWSN framework.
Here we count the UWSN, because we can collect
the data of earthquakes, which are originated in
ocean-areas; and in ocean-areas, sometimes tsunamis
follow the earthquakes. Due to lots of challenges of
UWSN such as overall infrastructure and
communication, it is different from terrestrial WSN.
In this paper, the proposed WSN protocol is only for
terrestrial WSN. Here, we consider that the delay
sensitive routing protocol [6] is the routing protocol
of our UWSN.
Left side of Fig. 1 presents a combined view of
data collection framework of terrestrial WSN, which
is used for disaster mitigation and rescue operation.
For disaster mitigation, data dissemination network
architecture is defined based on a hybrid model,
whose heterogeneity is confirmed by sensor, ARSs
and cellular network. Deployed sensor nodes for
forming sensor networks and to collect information
from surrounding areas, and hybrid network, referred
as an access network, hereafter, which combines a
cellular network and ad hoc relay station (ARS) [5]
networks. We also initiate some concentric circular
zones in each cell for facilitating routing, which is
called zoning. For better illustration of disaster
mitigation architecture, we present the Fig. 2. This
figure is presented with a cellular system with 7 cells,
where some base stations are collapsed or
unreachable. In [5], author discusses the number of
ARSs needed to cover the entire system, and
proposes a seed growing approach for the case only a
limited number of ARSs are available. Seed ARS is
placed on each pair of shared edges along the border
between two cells. According to [5], Fig. 3 depicts a
cellular system with 19 cells, where major
classification of cell is two: boundary cell and non-
boundary cell. But in Fig. 2, our network framework
puts ARS in every edge without considering whether
it is a shared edge or non-shared edge. In order to
increase lifetime of sensor networks, we maintain
every cell as a non-boundary cell. For performance
study, in section 4, we divide boundary cell class into
two subclasses: boundary cell with two non-shared
edges and boundary cell with three non-shared edges.
As an example, in Fig. 3, cell 1 is a boundary cell
with three non-shared edges, where cell 2 and cell 5
are boundary cell with two non-shared edges and
non-boundary cell respectively. In section 4, by
evaluating performances of the protocol with respect
to above-mentioned three kinds of cell, we justify
that we have to consider every cell as a non-
boundary cell. A WSN protocol for this proposed
disaster mitigation architecture is developed in
section 4. In this paper, we assume that every ARS
supports two types of interface: ad hoc relay
interface and cellular interface. By ad hoc interface,
ARS can communicate with other ARSs and sensor
networks. ARS uses cellular interface to
3
communicate with base stations of cellular network. integrator. Section 5 presents a protocol for this
proposed rescue operation architecture.

Satellite

Onshore sink

Surface station
Base Station Ad hoc Relay Station (ARS)
Zoning Sensor Network Node
Cnode
Underwater sensor nodes
Sensor Network Node

Figure 1: Network model

Non-shared Edge
1 A pair of Shared Edge
2 3
4 5 6 ARS
7 8
9 10 11
Boundary Cell
12 13
14 15 16
17 18
19 Non-Boundary Cell

Base Station Ad hoc Relay Station (ARS)

Figure 3: Cellular network with 19 cells
Zoning
Collapsed Base Station Sensor Network Node

4 DISASTER MITIGATION
Figure 2: A 7 cell-model for disaster mitigation
One of the major advances in the field of
For rescue operation, rescue workers or first
surveillance technology is the deployment of
responders work for rescue purpose using portable
distributed WSN. This has provided a means to
data collectors named cnode and mobile access
monitor areas, which are either unreachable or
points. When cnode queries the sensor nodes, they
hostile to human existence. So for disaster mitigation,
switch from idle mode to active mode and start
WSN might be a strong medium of disaster data
reporting the sensed data to the cnode. Sensor nodes
dissemination. In pervious section, we have
of rescue operation are different from those of
presented a framework for this and now in this
disaster mitigation. RFID sensor can be used as
section, we present a protocol for this WSN along
location tracking interrogator for rescue operations
with its performance evaluation.
[7]. Non-battery RFID tags or passive RFID tags are
ubiquitously placed along roadsides and function as
4.1 WSN Protocol For Mitigation
information-storage units. Information such as
Mainly based on energy efficiency and
location of refuges and safety assessments of
considering some base stations are unreachable, here
damaged buildings is remotely downloaded for the
we propose a protocol for terrestrial WSN that is
tags by the RFID integrators or sensors. The
applicable for disaster mitigation purpose.
maximum communication distance between the
4.1.1 Addressing scheme
passive or non-battery RFID tag and the interrogator
The addressing scheme in traditional networks is
is roughly 1.5 meters. Battery-driven RFIDS can
fixed x-y coordinate address. But in our proposed
extend the communication distance with the
protocol, the addressing format is <Location ID,

Ubiquitous Computing and Communication Journal 4

Node Type ID>. The Location ID identifies the
location of a node that conducts sensing activities in
a specified region of the network. Locations of these
nodes are recorded in terms of polar co-ordinates (r,
θ) with respect to the base station as origin of the
coordinate system (0,0). Based on r value, each node
falls in one of the logical zones, which are concentric.
Also, every sensor node keeps records of its polar
co-ordinates (ri, θi) with respect to i-th ARS, where i
= 1,2,…,6. Protocol is applicable to stationary sensor
nodes and a stationary base station. The
implementation can be extended to mobile and ad
hoc networks with GPS enabling of the nodes, which
is an added expenditure. In that case, it is assumed
that the base station keeps up-to-date information on
the location of all the nodes in the network with the
help of GPS. Each node within the cluster is further
provided with a Node Type ID that describes the
functionality of the sensor such as seismic sensing,
thermal sensing, RFID sensing and so on.
4.1.2 Clustering and scheduling
The proposed disaster mitigation protocol is a
cluster-based protocol. For facilitating clustering and
routing of the protocol, each cell is divided into some
concentric zones, what is already mentioned in
chapter 3. Each zone area is divided into some sub
areas. Each sub-area has unique identification
number. Every sensor node within this sub-area uses
this identification number along with its own address
for communication purpose.
Each sub-area stands for a cluster, while a sensor
node acts as a cluster head for the respective cluster.
Cluster head selection is based on two properties that
are residual energy and node centrality of the nodes
of a cluster. Node centrality- a value that classifies
the nodes based on how central the node is to the
cluster. To find node centrality, every node keeps
the records of distances to the other nodes of
respective cluster and calculates the reciprocal of
sum of the squared distances of others node of the
cluster. Since the transmission energy is proportional
to d2, the higher value of the node centrality, the
lower the amount of energy required by other nodes
to transmit data to that node as a cluster head. For
elaboration, see Eq. (2) and Eq. (3), where SN is the
set of sensor nodes of the Nth sub area (i.e. cluster).
di = ∑ d i2, j
j ∈{ S N − i }
1
Node Centrality of node i =
di
Every cluster head maintains a routing table,
which keeps the location information of nearby
cluster-heads’ locations in polar coordinates. When
energy level Ei of a sensor node i (who is acting as a
cluster head) reaches a threshold level or interval
time between two consecutive clustering process is
Ubiquitous Computing and Communication Journal
over, a new cluster head is selected in the respective
cluster based on residual energy of sensor nodes and
node centrality of that cluster (i.e. sub-area). Every
node transmits a message containing the information
about weighted summation of its residual energy and
node centrality to its neighbors along with the node
address and sub-area identification number. In Eq.
(4), Ci represents the weighted summation of its
residual energy and node centrality of ith
1− γ
Ci = γ Ei + (4)
di
node. In this equation, a constant γ is introduced to
weight the residual energy and node centrality,
whose value is 0.7. A node i, receiving the Cj
information of all other nodes j, compares its Ci with
Cj of all other nodes j in the same sub-area (i.e.
cluster). If its Ci is less than Cj of other nodes j of
same sub-area, then it can detect the node having the
maximum Cj from the received information, and
elect the corresponding j as the cluster head. Thus
the node having maximum Cj becomes the cluster
head for the particular sub-area. After being a new
cluster head, the cluster head updates the routing
tables of its nearby clusters and the cluster itself. Fig.
4 represents the way of update the route. By
broadcasting the route discovery message with its
sub area identification, new cluster head informs the
nearby clusters that the cluster, which is representing
the corresponding sub area, has changed its head. As
a consequence, every nearby cluster updates its
routing table information for the corresponding
cluster. When the new cluster head receives polar
coordinates from nearby clusters, it calculates the
minimum angular deviation in shorter distance with
Algorithm Update_Route()
{
// All the distance and angle (in radians) measured
// with respect to nearest ARS of initiating cluster head
r0 ← new cluster head radial distance;
θ0 ← new cluster head polar angle;
// Transmit signal with E such that (Q≤E<2Q)
Broadcast_Route_Discovering_Message ( );
// receiving heads response with their polar
// coordinates with respect to respective
// ARS as acknowledgement.
r1, r2,….., rn ← radial distances of responding heads.
(2) θ1, θ2,….., θn ← polar angles of responding heads.
Receive_Co-ordinates((r1,θ1),(r2,θ2),…,( rn,θn));
// calculation of minimum angular deviation with
(3) //respect to all i node, where ri < r0
Calculate_Minima((|θ0-θ1|),( |θ0-θ2|),…,(|θ0-θn|));
// return polar co-ordinate of next head (with
// respect to respective ARS)
retrun (r, θ)
}
Figure 4: Algorithm for next head selection of
routing
5
the nearest ARS. The method of communication
between the nodes under one particular cluster head
and the cluster head is same as that of the LEACH.
Radio interference caused by neighboring
clusters that could impede the operation of any given
cluster. This protocol makes use of code–division
multiple access (CDMA) codes to counteract this
problem. Each cluster is assigned a spreading code
that the nodes in the cluster use to distinguish their
data transmission from those of nodes in the
neighboring clusters.
4.1.3 Routing
After clustering and scheduling, cluster nodes
send their data to the cluster head based on scheduled
slots. Once data from all sensor nodes have been
received, the cluster head performs data fusion on the
collected data, and reduces the amount of raw data
that needs to send to the nearest ARS. In general,
data is routed to the base station by single hop or by
multi hop. But here, to reduce average energy
dissipation of sensor nodes and consider unreachable
or collapsed base stations, data is routed to the
nearest ARSs rather than base stations. And energy is
distributed over the sensor network by keeping
multi-hop routing from cluster head to the nearest
ARS.
During routing, cluster head node forward its
data to a neighbor cluster head that is selected
applying the algorithm presented in Fig. 4. After
forwarding data to selected cluster head, the sensor
node listens to that head to ensure that it repeats the
data packet i.e. implicit acknowledgement. If the
packet is not repeated, this indicates a transmission
failure. A transmission failure invokes route update
process (i.e. Fig. 4). Sometimes, a node fails to
forward data to none of its neighbors or it does not
have any negihbor within its transmission range.
Usually this occurs when the node observes a void
region between itself and the destination ARS. At
this situation, it broadcast the sensed data with the
maximum transmission power. It is already
mentioned due to severe disaster some base stations
can be collapsed. So unreachable or collapsed base
stations have to be considered during developing
data routing technique for disaster management. In
this proposed protocol, clusters send data to ARSs
and then ARSs send data to the base stations
considering their status: collapsed or not. If the base
station of respective cell is collapsed, in that case
ARSs send their data to a live base station or ARSs.
During disaster, any ARS may be collapsed. But
there is little chance to collapse all ARSs of a cell.
Only one ARS is enough to convey data from sensor
network of a cell to a base station.
Fig. 5 shows data routing outline, how data is
routed from data source cluster head to ARS. This
outline is a modified version of [2], where authors
consider that data from cluster head is routed to base
station through multi hoping by cluster heads. But
Ubiquitous Computing and Communication Journal
here, during disaster some base stations may be
collapsed. So data sending from initiating cluster
head to the nearest ARS is done through multi-
hoping by cluster heads. After receiving data, ARS
sends data to one of its neighboring base stations if
one of these two is not collapsed. If both base
stations are collapsed, ARS sends data to the nearest
ARS. Routing protocols of ARSs and base stations
discussed in [5] might be the best choice for
proposed framework and disaster mitigation data
dissemination from ARSs to base stations. For
integrated networks with heterogeneous technologies
such as cellular and ad hoc relaying, [5] describes the
proposed signaling and routing protocols for iCAR to
establish and release bandwidth guaranteed
connections possibly involving ARS relaying. Such
protocols aim to addressing the QoS need of IP based
real time applications.
Base
Cluster
Head
Actual
ARS
Radial
Figure 5: Data routing outline
4.2 Performance Evaluation
To evaluate the performance of the proposed
protocol, using C programming language a
simulation program is developed based on proposed
framework. Though here the performances of the
protocol are studied in two ways: based on 3 types of
cell and comparing with others protocols such as
LEACH, PEGASIS; in both cases main evaluation
metric is system life.
4.2.1 Based on 3 Types of Cell
To evaluate the performance of the proposed
protocol, the proposed protocol is simulated and
compared its performance regarding three different
types of cell: non- boundary cell, boundary cell with
2 non-shared edges, and boundary cell with 3 non-
shared edges, which are briefly discussed with Fig. 3.
Here performance metrics are average energy
dissipation, successful data delivery and number of
live nodes. In a cell, 500 sensor nodes are uniformly
distributed with center-located base station and
energy level of each node is assigned initially 5 Joule.
Here the simulation area is kept small regarding
general sensor network simulation technique and
6
sensor network readers can get an idea easily from
the following simulation results. Eventually, the
radius of cell is 50 meter. Data packet size of sensor
node is 1 kilobit. Number of operation is divided into
rounds like LEACH protocol, and the number of
rounds is 2500. In analysis, radio model of [9] is
used that has already been discussed briefly in
section 4.1.1.
In Fig. 6, the plot shows the total number of live
data messages than other types of cell. Non-
boundary cell offers improvements in data delivery
by factor of 12 percent and 49 percent over boundary
cell with 2 non-shared edges and boundary cell with
3 non-shared edges respectively.
5

Average energy dissipation (Joule)

nodes that remain alive over the number of rounds of 4.5
activity for proposed protocol regarding three types 4
of cell. With non-boundary cell, 486 nodes out of
3.5
500 remain alive after the end of the simulation,
3
while corresponding numbers for boundary cell with
2 non-shared edges and boundary cell with 3 non- 2.5

shared edges are 341 and 125 respectively. 2

Eventually performance of non-boundary cell 1.5

justifies the update of ARS placement in chapter 3. 1
The improvement of gained through non- 0.5
boundary cell is further exemplified by the average
0
energy dissipation graph in Fig. 7, which shows the 0 500 1000 1500 2000 2500
average energy dissipation of the protocols under Number of rounds
study over the number of rounds of operation. The
plot clearly portraits that non-boundary cell has a
much more desirable energy expenditure curve than Figure 7: Average energy dissipation over the
those of others. After 2500 rounds, 4% energy number of rounds of operation
remained in boundary cell with 3 non-shared edges
and 21% energy remained in boundary cell with 2
non-shared edges , while in non-boundary cell,
remaining energy is 50% of the initial network 1200000
Number of data messages received

energy.
1000000

800000

600000
500
450 400000
Number of live nodes

400
350
200000
300
250
0
200
0 500 1000 1500 2000 2500
150
Number of rounds
100
50
0
0 500 1000 1500 2000 2500
Figure 8: Total number of data messages received at
Number of rounds the ARSs over the number of rounds

4.2.2 Comparison with PEGASIS and LEACH

Figure 6: Number of live nodes over the number of
rounds of operation.
Next the number of data messages received by
the sink (i.e. ARS) for three types of cells is analyzed.
Fig. 8 shows the total number of data messages
received by the sink over the number of rounds of
activity. The plot clearly illustrates the effectiveness
of non-boundary cell in delivering significantly more
In this section, the performance of the proposed
protocol is compared with those of PEGASIS and
LEACH protocol. Simulation environment is same as
section 4.2.1 except cell radius and number of
deployed sensor nodes. Here cell radius is 500 meter
(i.e. ten times bigger than previous environment).
Like previous simulation environment,
circumscribed hexagon is a regular hexagon.
Eventually the diagonals’ intersection of the hexagon

Ubiquitous Computing and Communication Journal 7

divides the hexagon into 6 equal areas. 1200 sensor PEGASIS LEACH Proposed Protocol
nodes are uniformly distributed over these 6 areas.

Number of rounds
Fig. 9 presents the node death percentage over 2500

the number of rounds of operation for the PEGASIS, 2000

LEACH and proposed protocol. With proposed 1500

protocol all nodes remain alive till 1498 rounds, 1000

500
while in PEGASIS and LEACH, all nodes remain
0
alive till 1005 and 498 rounds. After 1502 rounds, 0 20 40 60 80 100
there is no live node in PEGASIS, while proposed
Energy consumption percentage
protocol can maintain the system up to 2019 rounds.
Although 75% nodes with LEACH method dies
within 1000 rounds due to direct transmission, few
closer nodes of ARS can communicate up to round Figure 10: Energy consumption percentage over the
1902. number of rounds of operation.
Energy consumption percentage of the protocols
under study is demonstrated in Fig. 10, where
proposed protocol presents most desirable energy Table 1: Average time for a round.
curve for the proposed framework. In LEACH, 50 %
energy of initial energy of the whole network is Protocol PEGASIS LEACH Proposed
consumed by the 630 rounds of operation, while the Protocol
corresponding round’s number in PEGASIS and
proposed protocol are 855 and 1190. Though [42] Average 24 2.5 4.1
presents that PEGASIS is a protocol, whose energy time for a
consumption rate is near to optimal, these results round (sec.)
contradict with that because energy consumption rate
depends not only technique but also coverage areas. 5 RESCUE OPERATION
The further improvement of proposed protocol
over PEGASIS is exhibited by computing average For rescue operation, we assume, multiple
round time, which is present in Table 1. Due to sensors are deployed in each room of a building or in
making chain among the nodes, PEGASIS takes localized areas. These sensors may be several types
huge time to complete a round, while proposed such like RFID tag location sensor, high temperature
technique saves time by not doing cluster head sensor in the fire, and distortion sensor of the
selection for every round, which is executed after building. In the event a disaster happens, assuming
interval time between two consecutive clustering survivors are trapped in rubble, sensor nodes located
process or if current cluster head i energy level Ei near the survivors may detect them. After detecting
reaches to threshold level. Though here LEACH survivors’ information or other necessary
performs better than proposed protocol because of information, sensor nodes have to disseminate their
LEACH’s direct transmissions from cluster heads, in data to cnode in an energy efficient way.
real world LEACH implementation in a large
network will not viable. The performance of 5.1 WSN Protocol for Rescue
proposed protocol can be easily improved by adding In this section, mainly based on energy
more ARSs in every cell of proposed data collection efficiency and lower delay, we propose a WSN
framework. protocol only for rescue operation.
5.1.1 Addressing scheme
This node addressing scheme is similar to the
PEGASIS LEACH Proposed Protocol
scheme that described in section 4.1.1., where the
addressing format is <Location ID, Node Type ID>.
Number of rounds

2500
2000 But here node does not need to keep the record of its
1500 polar-coordinate with respect to ARSs.
1000 5.1.2 Routing
500 Two major issues are associated with this
0 proposed routing process, namely task dissemination
0 20 40 60 80 100
and data dissemination.
Node death percentage Task Dissemination: For rescue purpose, cnode
collects data from sensor nodes of disaster areas.
This data collection is similar to a query based data
Figure 9: Node death percentage over the number of collection, which is denoted as task based data
rounds of operation. collection. At the beginning, cnode broadcasts a task
message over the sensor nodes of a particular area.

Ubiquitous Computing and Communication Journal 8

Due to directional antennas in cnodes, sensor nodes
in specific sections of the disaster area are invoked in
sensing system. In the task message, cnode includes
its polar coordinate regarding base station as its
origin. We assume, during task dissemination cnode
and sensor nodes are located in same cell of a
cellular system; and cnode has GPS facility though
here we consider that sensor nodes do not have this
facility. In addition, here considered sensor nodes are
stationary. For mobile sensor nodes, we can add GPS
facility with the sensor nodes, and in that case cost
will be expanded. After receiving the broadcasting
message from the cnode with particular task id and
polar coordinate, every sensor node updates its polar
coordinate regarding current cnode as its origin. For
instance, in Fig. 11, a sensor node S, whose polar
coordinate is (rs, θs) with respect to base station
O(0,0), calculates its polar coordinate with respect to
current cnode C(rc, θc) and that would be (CS,
∠SCD).
S (rs,θs)
C (rc,θc) D Cnode
O (0,0)
Figure 11: Polar coordinate calculation of sensor
node S with respect to current cnode C.
Data Dissemination: At the end of the task
dissemination, every sensor node in the specific area
that is covered by directional antenna of cnode
senses data. The sensed data should be forwarded to
the cnode that broadcast the task. Here we use a
multi-hoping technique for forwarding the sensed
data. For selecting the next hop, we use similar
algorithm that is presented in Fig. 4. But here all
polar coordinates of sensor nodes are computed with
respect to task initiating cnode. This is an angular
deviation updated algorithm of [2]. Here a sensor
node selects its next hop based on minimum angular
deviation on the way to the cnode. A sensor node
broadcasts a route discovery message to its
neighbors. After receiving the route discovery
message, the neighbors who already received the
task message from the particular cnode send their
polar coordinates (where cnode is regarded as origin)
to route discovery message initiating sensor node.
And then the route discovery message initiating
sensor node finds the minimum angular distance next
hop from the receiving polar coordinates of its
neighbors and updates its routing record. A sensor
node does not select a new next hop for every
Ubiquitous Computing and Communication Journal
individual task id. It only selects a next hop on the
following condition:
-cnode changes its coordinate position.
-transmission failure.
After forwarding data to selected next hop, the
sensor node listens to that hop to ensure that it
repeats the data packet i.e. implicit
acknowledgement. If the packet is not repeated, this
indicates a transmission failure. A transmission
failure invokes next hope selection process.
Sometimes, a node fails to forward data to none of its
neighbors or it does not have any negihbor within its
transmission range. Usually this occurs when the
node observes a void region between itself and the
destination cnode. At this situation, it broadcast the
sensed data with the maximum transmission power.
Fig. 12 depicts data routing outline.
Radial Distance
Actual Distance
Sensor node
Figure 12: Routing outline
5.2 Performance Evaluation
To evaluate the performance of the proposed
protocol of rescue network architecture, we simulate
the protocol and compare its performance with that
of SENDROM [1] architecture. Performance is
measured by system lifetime, initial route
establishment delay and recovery delay. Throughout
the simulation, we consider 50 nodes are uniformly
distributed in area of 160×160 meters and cnode is
located on one of the corners. Operation is divided
into number of events. Each individual task id
represents individual event. Radio model used in [8]
is used for energy computation, where the power
dissipation is 35 mW in idle mode, 395 mW in
receive mode and 660mW in transmit mode. The
data transmission rate is set to 1.6 Mbps.
In Fig. 13, the plot shows remaining total energy
of the network over the number of events of activity
for our proposed protocol and SENDROM. After 35
events, with proposed protocol, remaining total
energy is 73 percentage of initial total energy of the
network, while corresponding percentage for
SENDROM is 47. Proposed protocol offers
improvements in energy conservation by factor of
156 percent over SENDROM. In SENDROM, cnode
includes every node of the network during route
establishment phase. But some of these nodes that
9
waste their energy for route establishment are not SENDROM Proposed Protocol
14

Total number of failing nodes

used for data dissemination. In addition, angular
12
distance data dissemination technique of proposed
protocol invigorates the energy conservation process 10

of the network. 8
The improvement of life system through 6
proposed protocol is further exemplified by the
4
number of failing nodes in Fig. 14, which shows the
2
total number of failing nodes of the protocols under
study over the number of events of operation. The 0
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35
plot clearly portraits that proposed protocol has a
Number of events
much more desirable failing nodes curve than that of
other. After 35 events, one-fourth nodes are failed to
communicate in SENDROM, while in proposed
protocol, this number is 5% of the total nodes. Figure 14: The number of nodes failed due to energy
Next we analyze the number of events depletion
transmitted to sink (e.g. cnode) for the SENDROM SENDROM Proposed Protocol
and our proposed protocol. Fig. 15 shows the total 35

Total number events transmitted

number of events transmitted to the sink over the 30
number of events of activity. The plot clearly
25
illustrates the effectiveness of proposed protocol in
delivering significantly more events than its to sink 20

counterpart. Proposed protocol offers improvement 15

in event delivery by factor of 135 percent over
SENDROM. 10

Fig. 16 represents the route establishment delay 5

and route recovery delay of the protocols under study.
0
Though route establishment delay and route recovery 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35
delay are defined in the SENDROM system, in Number of events
proposed protocol, route establishment is not similar
to SENDROM. In SENDROM, cnode initiates route Figure 15: The number of events reported to the
establishment process and the process is completed network
for all nodes of the network by flooding the route
message. But in proposed protocol, this process is
14
not done in together. A node selects its next hop only
12
when it needs to that (see details in section 5.1.2).
Time (Sec)

10
For comparison purpose, in proposed protocol, we
8
define that total time for first time next hop selection
6
is denoted as route establishment time. When first
4
time selected next hop cannot forward data or
2
communicate, route update is needed; and the total
0
time to update route is denoted as route recovery SENDROM Proposed Protocol
time.
Route establishment delay Route Recovery delay
SENDROM Proposed Protocol
Remaining total energy of the

1
0.9
0.8
Figure 16: Route establishment and route recovery
network (*100%)

0.7
0.6 delay
0.5
0.4
0.3
0.2 6 CONCLUSION
0.1
0
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35
In this paper, we present a framework for
Number of events disaster mitigation and rescue operation that can be
easily implemented in real world communication
system. Though current real world communication
system does not support various effects of disasters
Figure 13: The energy available in the network or catastrophes, while our proposed system removes

Ubiquitous Computing and Communication Journal 10

those drawbacks. In addition, here we present
protocols for sensor networks, which are based on
proposed framework, consider energy efficiency of
the sensor nodes strongly along with lower route
establishment delay. We update the ARS placement
of actual ARS placement in [5]. The simulation
results justify this update. In future, our future
avenue is to develop a semantic query based protocol
for disaster management.
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