# An Efficient and Reliable Algorithm for Wireless Sensor Network
###### Abstract  
In wireless sensor networks (WSN), flooding increases the reliability in terms of successful transmission of a packet with higher overhead. The flooding consumes the resources of the network quickly, especially in sensor networks, mobile ad-hoc networks, and vehicular ad-hoc networks in terms of the lifetime of the node, lifetime of the network, and battery lifetime, etc. This paper aims to develop an efficient and reliable protocol by using multicasting and unicasting to overcome the issue of higher overhead due to flooding. Unicasting is used when the desired destination is at a minimum distance to avoid an extra overhead and increases the efficiency of the network in terms of overhead and energy because unicasting is favorable where the distance is minimum. Similarly, multicasting is used when the desired destination is at maximum distance and increases the network's reliability in terms of throughput. The results are implemented in the Department of Computer Science, Bacha Khan University Charsadda (BKUC), Pakistan, as well as in the Network Simulator-2 (NS-2). The results are compared with benchmark schemes such as PUMA and ERASCA, and based on the results, the performance of the proposed approach is improved in terms of overhead, throughput, and packet delivery fraction by avoiding flooding. sensor networks; multicasting; unicasting; flooding; ns-2 2021 21 8355 10 October 2021 11 December  
Overheads are the resources utilized by every sensor node such as computation time, bandwidth, energy and memory, etc. Likewise, throughput is the data transmission per second through the network. A flooded network becomes congested soon by increasing the overhead, and as a result, a packet will be in a queue. Due to a large queue, the throughput decreases [10; 11; 12; 13]. Unicasting, multicasting and flooding protocols in the wireless sensor network are always studied in respect of sender-based and receiver-based routing. Examples of receiver-initiated factors are protocol for unified multicasting through announcement (PUMA) [14], core assisted mesh based protocol (CAMP) [15], and efficient and reliable core assisted multicast routing protocol in MANET (ERASCA) [16]. Sender based protocols are dynamic core based multicasting protocol (DCMP) [17], neighbor supporting multicast protocol (NSMP) [18] and on-demand multicast routing protocol (ODMRP) [19]. The recent research in multicasting and unicasting based routing protocols in the wireless network and wireless sensor network motivates the researchers in hybrid protocols. In hybrid protocols, unicasting and multicasting can be used in the same protocols according to their need. This hybrid approach provides efficiency in overhead and energy utilization more effectively with a longer lifetime of the node and the network. Hence, node/group/network efficiency is essential for achieving efficient communication as compared to flooding, where the node and the network lifetime decrease due to frequent flooding. In addition to efficiency, a stable protocol is necessary during high mobility in the WSN's environment. The high mobility and harsh channel conditions deteriorate the protocol's reliability in terms of throughput in unicasting and multicasting. It is, therefore, necessary to evaluate the reliability of the protocol during unicasting and multicasting. An efficient and reliable core assisted multicast routing protocol in MANET (ERASCA), CAMP and PUMA were used previously in MANET [11]. In these protocols, flooding is used inside the mesh/receiver group to transmit data packets to the destined receiver. This increases the reliability of the packet transmission with the increase in the overhead. However, ERASCA protocol efficiency and reliability can be further improved using a hybrid approach in the proposed extended ERASCA protocol (EERASCA). In the proposed EERASCA, a hierarchy is created in the network using multicasting and unicasting.