Optimized load balanced routing protocol for a MIMO based wireless sensor network

Wireless sensor networks consist of densely populated nodes with sensing, low computational and wireless communications capabilities. Many routing, power management and data dissemination protocols have been specifically designed for WSNs where energy awareness is an essential design issue. Routing protocols in WSNs might differ depending on the application and network architecture. WSN routing protocols are generally designed to account for a single sink and WSN multicast protocols optimize communication from a single source. In this study, a new routing protocol is developed to implement MIMO (Multiple Input and Multiple Outputs) communication where multiple sources report their data to multiple sinks. The aim is to increase network lifetime, by implementing on an energy efficient routing protocol which minimizes the number of nodes involved in routing and balances their forwarding load. The lifetime of the network was analyzed by implementing single sink andmulti sink routing techniques. The optimal route path between multiple sources to multiple sink based on the link quality of the selected paths was determined with TinyOS test bed using Iris Motes.