An Underground Mobile Wireless Sensor Network Routing Protocol for Coal Mine Environment

The routing protocol which can meet the requirement of underground wireless sensor network plays a decisive role in improving the monitoring quality and the survival time of network. As the different energy supplement method of Beacon nodes and Mobile nodes in the underground Mobile Wireless Sensor Networks (UMWSN), The UMWSN is the energy level unbalanced network, which determines that the task of the data forwarding should be completed by the mobile node as far as possible. Furthermore due to the movement of the mobile node which lead to the topology of the UWSN frequently change, the traditional Beacon-based data forward method can not meet the data routing requirement of UWSN. Based on the analysis on the deployment of UMWSN and the movement characteristic of the mobile node, a Mobile Node Based Route (MNBR) protocol is proposed, which can help the node build up the routing path quickly with the adjacent node’s motion information. The protocol can lower the energy consumption of the beacon node obviously by reduce the beacon node’ involvement in the data forwarding. Simulation results show that the MBUR protocol can ensure a balanced use of node energy and prolong the life cycle of the network, and has the obviously advantages in the coal mine environment than the Beacon-based data forward method.