Comparing Routing Protocols for WSN in Agricultural Scenario

The environmental monitoring is particularly important in the agricultural sector to avoid or limit destructive phenomena or problems for human activities. Precision Agriculture, also known as Engineering for agriculture, uses innovative processes involving the use of integrated systems, such as electronic and automatic systems, to monitor and predict some critical situations. A great possibility for environmental monitoring is the use of Wireless sensor network, low cost structures that need little maintenance, and are simple to install and manage. Our study focuses in particular on the area relating to data transmission through the network, the routing protocols, in order to evaluate the best solution that allows energy savings and increases the reliability of the system. It compares the AODV (Ad hoc On Demand Distance Vector), LEACH (Low Energy Adaptive Clustering Hierarchy), PEGASIS (Power-Efficient Gathering in Sensor Information Systems), MPRR (Multipath Ring Routing) and a modified version of MPRR, carrying out simulations through Castalia, a free tool specific for WSN. The simulations have shown that the modified version of multipath ring routing represents the best solution in terms of network duration and reliability.