A Source Based On-Demand Data Forwarding Scheme for Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are becoming more important in the medical and environmental field. The authors propose an on-demand routing protocol using sensor attractiveness-metric (Pa) gradients for data forwarding decisions within the network. Attractiveness-based routing provides an efficient concept for data-centric routing in wireless sensor networks. The protocol works on-demand, is source-initiated, has a flat hierarchy and has its origin in the idea of pheromone-based routing. The algorithm supports node-to-sink data traffic and is therefore a lightweight approach to generalized multihop routing algorithms in WSNs. The performance evaluation of the proposed protocol is done by extensive simulation using a multi-agent based simulation environment called NetLogo. The efficiency of the attractiveness-based routing algorithm is compared in simulations with the well known Dynamic Source Routing algorithm (DSR). The authors conclude that the Pabased routing algorithm is well suited for easy to set up WSNs because of its simplicity of implementation and its adaptability to different scenarios by adjustable weighting factors for the node’s attractiveness metric.