Ticket-based QoS routing optimization using genetic algorithm for WSN applications in smart grid

Wireless sensor network (WSN) information network in Smart Grid is envisioned to handle diversified traffic such as real-time sensitive data and non-real-time traffic. Therefore, QoS routing protocol in smart grid network is essential. Ticket-based routing (TBR) protocol is a promising protocol because it can select routes based on several desired metrics, for example route cost and delay. However, the original TBR suffers the need for transmitting a huge number of tickets to probe the sensor network and discover the path cost and delay. Genetic algorithm can be used to minimize the number of tickets as well as discovery messages overhead. In this work, we implement genetic algorithm (GA-TBR) at the source sensor node to collect the state information inside the WSN environment of Smart Grid and hence optimize the selection of routes to ensure the required QoS. Extensive simulation experiments have been conducted to investigate the performance of GA-TBR. The simulation results have shown that with few tickets, the proposed algorithm is able to select routes with minimum possible delay and shows 28% improvement compared to ad hoc on demand distance vector routing (AODV) protocol.