ABSTRACT

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) provide a powerful means to collect

information on a wide variety of natural phenomena. WSNs typically consist of a
cluster of densely deployed nodes communicating with a sink node. During this
communication data from sensor nodes to sink may suffer from channel contention,
interference, packet loss, energy conservation. To overcome these in WSNs there is a
need for a better transport layer. To deliver the data reliably in WSNs, Reliable Multi
Segment Transport (RMST) is used.

Directed diffusion is a communication paradigm intended for sensor network

applications. The directed diffusion protocol family has three different diffusion
algorithms. They are One-Phase Pull diffusion, Two-Phase Pull diffusion and Push
diffusion.

The project deals with reliable data transport in sensor network using RMST. It
is a reliable transport layer protocol for WSNs and it is meant to operate on top of the
gradient mechanism used in directed diffusion. RMST uses One-Phase Pull diffusion
algorithm to forward a large blob. RMST adds two important features to directed
diffusion. They are fragmentation/reassembly of segments, and reliable message
delivery. RMST includes caching mode and non-caching mode which provides hop-
by-hop recovery and end-to-end recovery.

RMST maintains a ‘hole map’, which has the list of lost fragments. Whenever
there is a fragment loss, it is notified with the help of the negative acknowledgement
(NACK). The advantage of the RMST is to reduce the number of negative
acknowledgement by selectively sending a negative acknowledgement to the entire set
of lost fragments. Due to single NACK the energy usage is reduced. Since One-Phase
Pull diffusion algorithm is used, the flooding of control messages in the sensor
network is reduced. Evaluation is performed for hop-by-hop (cached) recovery and
end-to-end (non-cached) recovery.