Energy efficient information dissemination protocols by negotiation for wireless sensor networks

In this paper we consider a distributed and efficient information dissemination and retrieval system for wireless sensor networks. In such a system each sensor node operates autonomously with no central node of control in the network, and it can be a data source (it produces data) as well as a data sink (it consumes data). We aim at developing energy efficient protocols that disseminate information sensed at a source node to any other nodes that are interested in the information. We propose two protocols, one is based on the quorum scheme and the other is based on the home agent scheme. The proposed protocols have three advantages: (1) Fully distributed. There is no need for any sensor node to have the global information of the network and each sensor node operates based on its local information; (2) high success rate for data retrieval; (3) capable of dealing with mobile sensors as well as static sensors. The energy efficiency of the protocols is evaluated by two metrics: (a) number of message transmissions required for the source node to advertise its data to all possible data consumers; (b) number of hops of the path between the source node and the querying node for data transmission. The theoretical analysis and simulation results show significant energy savings of the proposed protocols over the previous protocols for the similar goal. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.