Delay-efficient Routing across High-throughput Wireless Network Clusters

Wireless sensor and adhoc networks are hierarchically clustered for energy-efficiency, while gathering and aggregating data at the central clusterhead. Subsequent long-range communications from the clusterheads cause large-scale interference and energy-hole problems around them. It is thus better to have packets forwarded via short-range multi-hop routes between the clusterheads at different levels of the hierarchy. In order to discover the most optimal routes that serve the purpose, paths that minimize the inter-cluster routing delay within latticed clusters are analyzed. Consequently, a lowdelay, energy-balancing distributed algorithm for routing across clusters is developed, which outperforms shortest path routing in high throughput networks. A parametric study comprising large-scale network evaluations is performed by developing an NS-3 based simulator.