A DMA-WSN Based Routing Strategy to Maximize Efficiency and Reliability in a Ship to Communicate Data on Coronavirus

Abstract

Background: The Sensor Nodes (SNs) are deployed in an environment where human beings are not able to perform the tasks. Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) is used for applications in security, military surveillance, habitat monitoring, agriculture, etc. All these applications require SNs to have good battery backup so that they can perform for a long duration. Recent research shows that agent-based strategies increase the efficiency of WSN in comparison to conventional WSN in which every SN is static. During the current pandemic of Covid-19, various public resources, such as train, bus, hotels, etc., were used for isolating the Covid-19 patients. In a similar way, the ship helps to keep humans away from each other. Methods: In the current work, WSN has been deployed on a ship to monitor the health of Covid-19 patients. A 109 m long ship with 12.8 m altitude and 23 m width along with 6 decks has been considered. The SNs have been deployed on different floors of the modern ship. Six decks have been considered, and on each deck, 50 SNs have been deployed. A Drone-driven Mobile Agent (DMA) routing strategy has been proposed. DMA is a software program that moves across the network around the SNs and collects information from wearable sensors, such as body temperature, SpO2, etc. DMA is capable of aggregating and delivering the data packets to the base station for further processing. DMA performs information processing, local processing, and collaborative signaling. DMA can move randomly or in fixed locations. Results: Results have been compared with multi-sink and mobile sink strategies, which reveal that the proposed and simulated technique enhances the life span and throughput of the network to monitor Covid-19 patients effectively. Conclusion: Results revealed the proposed technique to enhance the lifetime (DMA-fixed: 11633 rounds and DMA-random: 11740 rounds) and throughput (DMA-fixed: 148788 packets sent and DMA-random: 150008 packets sent) of the network.