A robust and energy-efficient data dissemination framework for wireless sensor networks

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are appealing in obtaining fine-granular observations about the physical world. Due to the fact that WSNs are composed of a large number of low-cost and energy-constrained sensor nodes, along with the notorious time-varying and error-prone nature of wireless links, scalable, robust and energy-efficient data dissemination techniques are needed for the emerging WSN applications such as environment monitoring and surveillance. In this paper, we examine this emerging field from the point of view of supply chain management and propose a hybrid data dissemination framework for WSNs. In particular, for each sensing task, the whole sensor field is conceptually partitioned into several functional regions based on the supply chain management methodology. Different routing schemes are applied to different regions in order to provide better performance in terms of reliability and energy consumption. For this purpose, we also propose a novel zone flooding scheme, essentially a combination of conventional geometric routing and flooding techniques. Our hybrid data dissemination framework features low overhead, high reliability, good scalability and flexibility, and preferable energy efficiency. Detailed simulation studies are carried out to validate the effectiveness and efficiency of our scheme.