The proposed multihop routing protocol, PHASeR, applies the technique of blind forwarding in a MWSN, which increases the reliability of data delivery through its inherent use of multiple routes. This approach requires a gradient metric to be continuously maintained, which is problematic in a dynamic topology. The literature commonly uses either flooding or location awareness, however flooding creates large amounts of overhead and location determination schemes can often be inaccurate, power hungry and create the issue of the dead end problem. PHASeR uses a novel method of gradient maintenance in a mobile network, which requires the proactive sharing of only local topology information. This is facilitated by a global TDMA (time division multiple access) MAC (medium access control) layer and further reduces the amount of overhead, which in turn will decrease packet latency. PHASeR is also set apart by its use of encapsulation, which allows data from multiple nodes to be transmitted in the same packet in order to handle high volumes of traffic. It utilises node cooperation to create a robust multipath routing solution. As such, the contribution of this paper is a cross-layer routing protocol for MWSNs that can handle the constant flow of data from sensors in highly mobile situations.
