A route maintaining algorithm using neighbor table for mobile sinks

In the wireless microsensor networks, both source and sink nodes can be changed or mobile. The movement of source and sink may lead to the breakage of existing routes. In most routing protocols, query packets are broadcasted to correct a broken route between source and sink, which causes significant communication overhead in terms of both energy and delay. In order to support the sink mobility of conventional routing protocols, we propose a simple route maintaining algorithm which does not use the flooding method. Since the proposed algorithm does not require the information on the geometric location of sensor nodes, it can be easily adopted in most existing routing protocols including Ad Hoc On Demand Distance Vector (AODV) and Direct Diffusion (DD). Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm drastically improves the conventional routing protocols in terms of both energy and delay in case of mobile sinks.