Receiver-oriented load-balancing and reliable routing in wireless sensor networks

Routing protocols in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) typically employ a transmitter-oriented approach ill Which the next hop node is selected based on neighbor or network information. This approach incurs a large overhead when the accurate neighbor information is needed for efficient and reliable routing. In this paper a novel receiver-oriented load-balancing and reliable routing (RLRR) protocol is proposed. In RLRR. all intermediate node solicits next hop candidates. each of which is to respond with its own backoff time Clubbed a temporal gradient (TG). In this way. the next hop is selected without any central coordination on a packet-by-packet basis. Thus, each node needs not maintain and neighbor information. The remaining energy level used to determine the TG is always accurate and up-to-date. Furthermore. neighbor nodes whose hop Count is less than the soliciting node participate in the next-hop selection process with loop-free operation guarantee. Comprehensive simulations are carried out to show that RLRR achieves relatively longer network lifetime and higher reliability than other existing schemes. Copyright (c) 2007 John Wiley & Sons. Ltd.