A Study on Energy-Efficient Routing Protocols for Wireless Sensor Networks

Energy-efficient communication protocol for wireless microsensor networks

Abstract: Wireless distributed microsensor systems will enable the reliable monitoring of a variety of environments for both civil and military applications. In this paper, we look at communication protocols, which can have significant impact on the overall energy dissipation of these networks. Based on our findings that the conventional protocols of direct transmission, minimum-transmission-energy, multi-hop routing, and static clustering may not be optimal for sensor networks, we propose LEACH (Low-Energy Adaptive Clustering Hierarchy), a clustering-based protocol that utilizes randomized rotation of local cluster based station (cluster-heads) to evenly distribute the energy load among the sensors in the network. LEACH uses localized coordination to enable scalability and robustness for dynamic networks, and incorporates data fusion into the routing protocol to reduce the amount of information that must be transmitted to the base station. Simulations show the LEACH can achieve as much as a factor of 8 reduction in energy dissipation compared with conventional outing protocols. In addition, LEACH is able to distribute energy dissipation evenly throughout the sensors, doubling the useful system lifetime for the networks we simulated.

Energy-efficient communication protocols for wireless microsensor networks

Abstract: Wireless distributed microsensor systems will enable the reliable monitoring of a variety of environments for both civil and military applications. In this paper, we look at communication protocols, which can have signicant impact on the overall energy dissipation of these networks. Based on our ndings that the conventional protocols of direct transmission, minimum-transmission-energy, multihop routing, and static clustering may not be optimal for sensor networks, we propose LEACH (Low-Energy Adaptive Clustering Hierarchy), a clustering-based protocol that utilizes randomized rotation of local cluster base stations (cluster-heads) to evenly distribute the energy load among the sensors in the network. LEACH uses localized coordination to enable scalability and robustness for dynamic networks, and incorporates data fusion into the routing protocol to reduce the amount of information that must be transmitted to the base station. Simulations show that LEACH can achieve as much as a factor of 8 reduction in energy dissipation compared with conventional routing protocols. In addition, LEACH is able to distribute energy dissipation evenly throughout the sensors, doubling the useful system lifetime for the networks we simulated.

GPSR: greedy perimeter stateless routing for wireless networks

Abstract: We present Greedy Perimeter Stateless Routing (GPSR), a novel routing protocol for wireless datagram networks that uses the positions of routers and a packet's destination to make packet forwarding decisions. GPSR makes greedy forwarding decisions using only information about a router's immediate neighbors in the network topology. When a packet reaches a region where greedy forwarding is impossible, the algorithm recovers by routing around the perimeter of the region. By keeping state only about the local topology, GPSR scales better in per-router state than shortest-path and ad-hoc routing protocols as the number of network destinations increases. Under mobility's frequent topology changes, GPSR can use local topology information to find correct new routes quickly. We describe the GPSR protocol, and use extensive simulation of mobile wireless networks to compare its performance with that of Dynamic Source Routing. Our simulations demonstrate GPSR's scalability on densely deployed wireless networks.

Directed diffusion: a scalable and robust communication paradigm for sensor networks

Abstract: Advances in processor, memory and radio technology will enable small and cheap nodes capable of sensing, communication and computation. Networks of such nodes can coordinate to perform distributed sensing of environmental phenomena. In this paper, we explore the directed diffusion paradigm for such coordination. Directed diffusion is datacentric in that all communication is for named data. All nodes in a directed diffusion-based network are application-aware. This enables diffusion to achieve energy savings by selecting empirically good paths and by caching and processing data in-network. We explore and evaluate the use of directed diffusion for a simple remote-surveillance sensor network.

HEED: a hybrid, energy-efficient, distributed clustering approach for ad hoc sensor networks

Abstract: Topology control in a sensor network balances load on sensor nodes and increases network scalability and lifetime. Clustering sensor nodes is an effective topology control approach. We propose a novel distributed clustering approach for long-lived ad hoc sensor networks. Our proposed approach does not make any assumptions about the presence of infrastructure or about node capabilities, other than the availability of multiple power levels in sensor nodes. We present a protocol, HEED (Hybrid Energy-Efficient Distributed clustering), that periodically selects cluster heads according to a hybrid of the node residual energy and a secondary parameter, such as node proximity to its neighbors or node degree. HEED terminates in O(1) iterations, incurs low message overhead, and achieves fairly uniform cluster head distribution across the network. We prove that, with appropriate bounds on node density and intracluster and intercluster transmission ranges, HEED can asymptotically almost surely guarantee connectivity of clustered networks. Simulation results demonstrate that our proposed approach is effective in prolonging the network lifetime and supporting scalable data aggregation.