Virtual-Range-Forwarding-Based Opportunistic Routing for Mine Goaf Sensor Networks

As a vital technology of the mine Internet of Things (MIoT), mine goaf sensor networks (MGSNs) have strong self-organization and invulnerability, which has the potential to realize the safety monitoring of the goaf. However, the adverse characteristics of MGSNs need to be addressed, such as time-varying wireless channels, serious signal attenuation, vulnerable network nodes, and limited nonrechargeable battery power. This article proposes a virtual-range-forwarding-based opportunistic routing (VFBOR) method for MGSNs. First, according to the actual environment of the goaf, the novel, appropriate deployment of low-cost routing nodes is designed among sensors to construct hierarchical, invulnerable self-organized MGSNs. Moreover, following the principles of opportunistic routing theory, VFBOR synthetically evaluates the distance between nodes with regard to the residual energy to select the appropriate routing nodes. In addition, VFBOR adopts a recovery mechanism to avoid the void region problem during the data packet forwarding process of nodes and improve the network connectivity. Finally, a realistic implementation plan is proposed. The simulation results confirm that VFBOR significantly outperforms some existing routing protocols, in terms of energy saving, wireless communication connectivity, and network throughput.