A Range-based Opportunistic Routing Protocol for
Wireless Sensor Networks
Hajer Ben Fradj? , Rajoua Anane?? , Mehdi Bouallegue?? , and Ridha Bouallegue
?
Innovation of communication and cooperative mobiles, InnoV’COM Lab, University of Carthage,Tunisia
??
Laboratory of Acoustics at University of Maine, LAUM UMR CNRS n 6613, France
benfradj.hajer@gmail.com, Rajoua.anane@univ-lemans.fr,bouallegue.mehdi@gmail.com, ridha.bouallegue@ieee.org
Abstract—Wireless Sensor network (WSN) can be defined as
a collection of battery powered wireless sensor nodes, which can
sense events in the environment and share the data gathered
from sensing node to a sink node. However, this type of network
is seriously constrained by energy supply. Therefore, how to
enhance the network lifetime is a prominent and challenging
issue. In this context, the choice of the suitable routing protocol
is a vital task in the network layer of WSN.
This paper describes the EEOR (Energy Efficient Opportunistic
Routing), which focuses on the selection of the forwarding list to
minimize energy consumption. Then, we define a new strategy of
opportunistic routing, denoted ROR (Range-based Opportunistic
Routing), which is an improvement of EEOR. Simulation results
demonstrate that ROR is the most efficient to minimize the energy
and the number of dropped paquets.
Keywords—Wireless Sensor networks; Opportunistic Routing
Protocol; Energy efficiency; EEOR; ROR.
I. I NTRODUCTION
he massive proliferation of wireless technologies has
T revolutionized the media since the beginning of the
twenty-first century, including the emergence of ad hoc
networks. While the hosts in an ad-hoc network have their
own interests, sensor networks bring extra opportunity
to acquire and communicate data locally. In a sensor
network, an amount of energy is consumed during wireless
communications (mode of transmission and reception).
Moreover, the batteries used are small, and their replacements
are not always practical. Two alternatives exist, either the
development of protocols maximizing network lifetime while
specifying the network operating criteria. However, the current
challenge is to integrate energy recovery systems in each
sensor to ensure infinite lifetime. [1].
Obviously, the amount of energy depends on the charac-
teristics of the used source. Other parts, various works have
addressed the problem of routing in sensor networks where
each sensor has no prior information about the network. In
addition, the traditional routing protocols depend generally
on the nodes location and not consider wireless transmission
errors. Thus, the opportunistic routing uses the concept of
diffusion which, characterizes the wireless networks to route
packets properly.
The remainder of this paper is organized as follows: The next
section describes the opportunistic routing protocol in WSN.
Then, some related works are presented in section III. Section
IV offers details about the forwarder list of wireless sensor
978-1-5090-4372-9/17/$31.00 ©2017 IEEE
? Member, IEEE,
node. Thereafter, the description of the ROR routing strategy
is developed in section V, and finally, simulation results are
discussed in Section VI, followed by the conclusion in Section
VII.
II. THE OPPORTUNISTIC ROUTING
To ensure communication in WSNs, many routing pro-
tocols exist and have been adequately tested. Opportunistic
routing selects the next neighbor according to criteria of
proximity to the destination [2].
Opportunistic Routing is a new method of routing in the WSN,
it is a recent technic, which provides high throughput, reduce
energy consumption costs, and uses the concept of priority
when selecting the best route. Opportunistic Routing is based
on the following rules:
• Each network node(s) transmits hello messages to
discover neighboring nodes.
• Each node(s) sends the same message to neighboring
nodes.
• Using the coordination methods to select the best
node.
• Choose the nearest node of the destination.
In the literature, we distinguish many opportunistic routing
protocols, like ExOR. This algorithm is the primary protocol
in the literature, where the routing metric used is the Expected
Transmission Count (ETX). It is one of the most favored
routing metrics because it has a good accuracy in determining
link quality. ETX is used to improve network throughput,
especially for long paths [3] [4]. The best-known protocol
is called MORE (Mac independant and Opportunistic rout-
ing).This protocol takes advantage of the benefits of random
network coding to prevent coordination between nodes. It
operates on the code vectors, which ignore everything that is
not innovative and code each new transmission [5].
III. RELATED WORKS
Substantial research has been carried out to increase the
lifetime of wireless sensor through the development of new
routing strategy based on the energy consumed parameter.
In [6], authors present the first opportunistic routing pro-
tocol. Then, other reflection routes were designed after its
implementation. EXOR protocol depends on the Mac layer
and it follows these steps:
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 • The source prepared a broadcast packet. Priority met-
ric is based on the metric ETX [7] [8].
• If the destination gets a high percentage (90) of the
packet, another cycle is initiated.
In addition, authors [5]proposed a new protocol for static mesh
networks. This protocol is located between the IP layer and
802.11 layers . It takes advantage of the benefits of random
network coding to prevent the coordination between nodes. It
operates on the code vectors; vector ignores everything that is
not innovative and code each new transmission. It promotes
its use in sensor networks with low energy resources.
On the other hand the authors in [3] [9], defined a new
protocol, called opportunistic routing ”Energy Efficient Op-
portunistic Routing” (EEOR). This protocole costs for each
link connecting the node and its neighbors, whereas for the
forwarding list, it only adds the node that minimizes the total
cost of networks.
IV. FORWARDER LIST
Researches in [3] adopted the use of sensor network model
as G(U, F W D), where u represents a sensor node and the
F W D is the forward list of u.The cost of a link between
two nodes (i, j) is calculated by C = 1 − P . This expression
represents the probability that a packet is received correctly
and P is the probability that a packet is sent by a sensor u
and not received by any node.
|F wd(u)|
Y •
P = euvi . (1)
i=1
Where, (1 − euvi ) is the probability that the node u sends the
packet to the node v correctly.
So the forward list is calculated by:
F W D(u) = vi ...vj , i < j, Cvi < Cvj . (2)
Finally, the nodes are treated in a list according to their cost.
After calculating the forwarding list of each node, we will
calculated the total cost of sending a packet from a source to
a destination, This cost is divided into three parts:
Cu (F wd∗ ) = Cuh (F wd∗ ) + Cuf (F wd∗ ) + Cuc (F wd∗ ) (3)
Cuh represents the energy consumed by the node u to send a
packet [3].
Cuh (F wd∗ ) = W/P (4)
Where W is the energy consumed and Cuf represents the total
cost under U to forward the packet to the destination using the
FWD list [3].
Cuf (F wd∗ ) = β/P (5)
β is defined by:
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|F wd∗ | i−1
X Y
β = (1 − euv1 )Cv1 + ( euvj ).(1 − euvi )Cvi (6)
i=2 j=1
Where Cuc is the cost of communication to choose the best
path [3].
V. ROR PROTOCOL DESIGN AND
IMPLEMENTATION
WSNs are considered as one of the most active areas of
technology development due to their unique characteristics:
easy deployment and flexibility. That’s why several routing
algorithms based on multiple metrics and especially energy
consumption parameters are developed in order to increase the
lifetime of the networks [10] [11]. In this context, we propose
a new routing protocol called ”Range-based Opportunistic
Routing” and denoted ROR. Our new routing strategy ROR
is an improvement protocol of EEOR, where the concept of
opportunistic routing ”choice of nodes that have the minimum
distance to the destination” was added to the EEOR protocol.
The objectives of our ROR protocol are:
• Minimizing the Energy Consumption.
• Increasing the lifetime of the sensor network.
• Increasing the amount of data transmitted.
Minimizing the number of control messages.
The basic idea of ROR is to minimize the number of forward
list, from another selection, which only selects the closest
nodes to the destination with the maximum energy.
A. Proposed System
We mention that our work is closely based on the following
study, Euhanna Ghadimi [4] have made the problem of max-
imizing the life time under the assumption of the aggregation
of data, [7] treated the problem of routing via the shortest path
considering sensors with abilities to adapt their transmission
power. Consider a sensor array having only one source and
Fig. 1: (a) Proposed System. (b) Expected cost.
one destination. The network is modeled by a graph G(U, V ),
U is the set of nodes, V is the set of links. The error rate
on each link (i, j) is denoted by e , the distance between the
node U and the destination is denoted by d, and c denote the
expected cost at node.
 Step two : Calculates costs
B. ROR Algorithm
Input: the forwarder list of each node,target node, source node,
In this section, we describe the algorithm of our ROR the Expected cost(c, e, d), power w.
routing protocol, which is an improvement of EEOR algorithm. Output: the expected cost Cu(F W D) from node u to node t.
Indeed, ROR strategy is based on the combination of several Repeat
metrics which are, the distance to the destination, the error 1/Calculate the energy cost of each F W D list
Cuh
(F wd∗ ) = W/P
rate, the energy of node and the cost of sending.
2/ Calculate the total cost under U to forward the packet to the destination using the F W D list.
Furthermore, our ROR algorithm is based on two steps : Cuf
(F wd∗ ) = β/P
3/ Calculate the communication cost reach an agreement on the choice of best path.
c
Cu until no node add a forwarder list.
Step one : Forwarder list
Input: target node, source node, the Expected cost(c,e,d), power w.
Output: the forwarder list of each node. VI. SIMULATION AND RESULTS
1/add a source node in FWD list.
Repeat This section describes the simulation results. We consider
2/calculate The expected cost if a n ∈ [10, 200] nodes topology sensors, where each radio link
Fwd(u) = v1 is characterized by a fixed rate of error. Nodes may recover
C = (w + (1 − e) ∗ 1/c ∗ 1/d)/(1 P− e) amounts of energy at random intervals predicted in advance
3/if The expected cost of F W D < cost of nodes in F W D then add node. and their batteries were assumed ideal.

Fig. 2: (b) Expected cost.

TABLE I
S IMULATION PARAMETERS COST
node/cost e c d
N1 50 1 3
Fig. 3: Simulation on NS2.
N2 50 1.5 2
N3 50 3 1

The simulation parameters are summarized in Table 1.

Now, we are ready to verify our algorithm that a node can
not choose all its neighbors in the forwarding list. The first
step is to calculate the cost if the node v1 in a forwarding TABLE II
list. F W D{Source} = {N 1} N ETWORK PARAMETER
C = (w + (1 − e1)1/c1 ∗ 1/d1)/(1 − e1) = 2.33 Network Parameters Values
W is the energy consumed.
Number of Nodes 20 to 200
The second step is to compare the cost of node N 1 and the Initial Node Energy 1 Joules
total cost after adding N 1. C = 2.33 > c1 = 1 Tx Power 0.0762
To adding nodes, N 1 is done except that if N 1 cost is less Idle Power 0.05
than the total cost of the nodes in the forwarding list. Sleep power 0.000048
F W D{Source} = {N 2} Rx Power 0.0831
C = (w + (1 − e2)1/c2 ∗ 1/d2)/(1 − e2) = 2.33 >> 1.5 Routing Protocols ROR,EEOR,ExOR
F W D{Source} = {N 3} Propagation Model Two Ray Ground
C = (w + (1 − e3)1/c3 ∗ 1/d3)/(1 − e3) = 2.33 < 3 Antenna Model Omni Antenna
So the forwarding list contains N 3 because this node is the
nearest to the destination.The addition of 1/d to the total cost
shows the forward list minimization and the choice of the A. Network model and Notation
best nodes.
We specify that our simulations were performed on a net-
work G(U, V ), where U = {N 1, N 2, N 3, ..., N i} i ∈ [1, n],

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 TABLE III 20% efficient than the ExOR protocol, in terms of the
N ETWORK MODEL AND N OTATION number of lost packet.
Network model Notation
U∗ is a node list ordered by cost.
W is the energy consumed to send a packet.
e(Ni , Nj ) is the probability that the packet transmission under the link
(Ni , Nj ) is not efficient.
c represents the cost to send the source packet to the list FRW.
d is the distance between the source and destination.
Y is the probability that a received packet correctly.
C N ih is the energy calculated that nodes Ni sending a packet to
the destination.
CN if is the total cost expected by Ni to forward the packet to the
destination using the list F W D(Ni ).
CN ic is the total cost of all F W D communication nodes to reach
agreement on how the node selected for packet transmission.
EI Initial Energy of the Node(1j).
Ec Critical Energy Level of the Node().
Er Residual Energy of the Node().

n ∈ [10, 200] is the number of nodes, and V is the set of links. Fig. 5: Dropped packet ratio(%)
Table III presents the network parameters.

• Candidat selection:
B. ROR Implmentation and simulation The source use several possible ways to deliver the
We emphasize that our simulations were performed on packets to the destination. More specifically, when the
the ASUS machine under UBUNTU. The machine contains current node transmits a packet, all nodes that receive
8IntelCORE tm i7 and 4GB Ram. More particularly, the sim- successfully are F RW , it will coordinate with each
ulated sensor nodes are equipped with an application layer, of other to determine which will actually pass it on.
random linear network coding, opportunistic routing, random Fig. 6 represents the number of candidat set selections
access to the medium and a physical layer. between the source and the destination.

• Evaluation of Energy consumption:

Figure 4 depicts the comparison between three routing
protocols in terms of energy consumption (measured
in Mj). We remark that our ROR routing strategy
performs better characteristic than the EEOR and
ExOR protocols.

Fig. 6: Number of candidat selection

Fig. 4: Energy consumption
• Dropped packet:
Fig. 5 represents the total of dropped packets during
transmission process. It is clear that the ROR protocol
provides better performance than its counterparts in
term of the number of dropped packets. We can deduce
also from these curves that the ROR protocol is more
VII. C ONCLUSION
In this paper, we presented a new opportunistic routing
algorithm for wireless sensor network. The main objective of
this work is to minimize the number of F W D list for each
source, allowing minimized energy consumption for each node.
This conclusion is illustrated by comparing the first EXOR
opportunistic routing protocol, EEOR and the new proposed
protocol ROR.
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