skip to main content
research-article

SGF: A state-free gradient-based forwarding protocol for wireless sensor networks

Published: 03 April 2009 Publication History

Abstract

Limitation on available resources is a major challenge in wireless sensor networks. Due to high rates of unexpected node/link failures, robust data delivery through multiple hops also becomes a critical issue. In this article we present a state-free gradient-based forwarding (SGF) protocol to address these challenges. Nodes running SGF do not maintain states of neighbors or network topology and thus can scale to very large networks. Without using routing tables, SGF builds a cost field called gradient that provides each node the direction to forward data. The maintenance of gradient is purely driven by data transmissions and hence incurs little overhead. To adapt to transient channel variations and topology changes, the forwarder of a routing node is selected opportunistically among multiple candidate nodes through a distributed contention process. Simulation results show that SGF achieves significant energy savings and outperforms several existing data forwarding protocols in terms of packet delivery ratio and end-to-end delay.

References

[1]
Banerjee, S. and Misra, A. 2002. Minimum energy paths for reliable communication in multi-hop wireless networks. In Proceedings of the 3rd ACM International Symposium on Mobile Ad Hoc Networking and Computing (MobiHoc'02), 146--156.
[2]
Biswas, S. and Morris, R. 2005. ExOR: Opportunistic multi-hop routing for wireless networks. In Proceedings of the Conference on Applications, Technologies, Architectures, and Protocols for Computer Communications, 133--144.
[3]
Blum, B., He, T., Son, S., and Stankovic, J. 2003. IGF: A state-free robust communication protocol for wireless sensor networks. Tech. rep. CS-2003-11, Department of Computer Science, University of Virginia.
[4]
Broch, J., Maltz, D. A., Johnson, D. B., Hu, Y.-C., and Jetcheva, J. 1998. A performance comparison of multi-hop wireless ad hoc network routing protocols. In Proceedings of the 4th Annual International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking (MobiCom'98), 85--97.
[5]
Cao, Q. and Abdelzaher, T. 2006. Scalable logical coordinates framework for routing in wireless sensor networks. ACM Trans. Sensor Netw. 2, 4, 557--593.
[6]
Chang, J.-H. and Tassiulas, L. 2000. Energy conserving routing in wireless ad-hoc networks. In Proceedings of the Annual Joint Conference of the IEEE Computer and Communications Societies (InfoCom). vol. 1. 22--31.
[7]
Chen, B., Jamieson, K., Balakrishnan, H., and Morris, R. 2001. Span: An energy-efficient coordination algorithm for topology maintenance in ad hoc wireless networks. In Proceedings of the 7th Annual International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking (MobiCom'01), 85--96.
[8]
Couto, D. S. J. D., Aguayo, D., Bicket, J., and Morris, R. 2003. A high-throughput path metric for multi-hop wireless routing. In Proceedings of the 9th Annual International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking (MobiCom'03), 134--146.
[9]
Crossbow. 2003. Mica/mica2/micaz wireless measurement system datasheets. http://inf.tu-dresen.de/dargie/wsn/slides/students/MICA.ppt.
[10]
Dong, Q., Banerjee, S., Adler, M., and Misra, A. 2005. Minimum energy reliable paths using unreliable wireless links. In Proceedings of the 6th ACM International Symposium on Mobile Ad Hoc Networking and Computing (MobiHoc'05), 449--459.
[11]
Doshi, S., Bhandare, S., and Brown, T. X. 2002. An on-demand minimum energy routing protocol for a wireless ad hoc network. ACM SIGMOBILE Mobile Comput. Commun. Rev. 6, 3, 50--66.
[12]
Füssler, H., Widmer, J., Mauve, M., and Hartenstein, H. 2003. A novel forwarding paradigm for position-based routing (with implicit addressing). In Proceedings of IEEE 18th Annual Workshop on Computer Communications (CCW'03), 194--200.
[13]
Gomez, J., Campbell, A. T., Naghshineh, M., and Bisdikian, C. 2003. PARO: Supporting dynamic power controlled routing in wireless ad hoc networks. ACM/Kluwer J. Wireless Netw. 9, 5, 443--460.
[14]
Han, K.-H., Ko, Y.-B., and Kim, J.-H. 2004. A novel gradient approach for efficient data dissemination in wireless sensor networks. In Proceedings of the 60th IEEE Vehicular Technology Conference (VTC Fall), vol. 4, 2979--2983.
[15]
Heinzelman, W. R., Chandrakasan, A., and Balakrishnan, H. 2000. Energy-Efficient communication protocol for wireless microsensor networks. In Proceedings of the 33rd Hawaii Inernational Conference on System Sciences (HICSS'00), vol. 2, 3005--3014.
[16]
Heissenbüttel, M., Braun, T., Bernoulli, T., and Wälchli, M. 2004. BLR: Beacon-Less routing algorithm for mobile ad-hoc networks. Elsevier's Comput. Commun. J. 27, 11, 1076--1086.
[17]
Huang, P., Yang, X., and Tan, Y. 2008. A Robust and Energy-Efficient Approach for Image/Video Dissemination in WSNs. In Proceedings of the 5th Annual IEEE Consumer Communications and Networking Conference (CCNC'08).
[18]
Intanagonwiwat, C., Govindan, R., Estrin, D., Heidemann, J., and Silva, F. 2003. Directed diffusion for wireless sensor networking. IEEE/ACM Trans. Netw. 11, 1, 2--16.
[19]
Jain, S. and Das, S. R. 2005. Exploiting path diversity in the link layer in wireless ad hoc networks. In Proceedings of the 6th IEEE International Symposium on a World of Wireless Mobile and Multimedia Networks (WoWMoM'05), 22--30.
[20]
Lee, S.-J. and Gerla, M. 2000. AODV-BR: Backup routing in ad hoc networks. In Proceedings of the IEEE Wireless Communication and Networking Conference (WCNC'00), vol. 3, 1311--1316.
[21]
Lee, S.-J. and Gerla, M. 2001. Split multipath routing with maximally disjoint paths in ad hoc networks. In Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC'01), vol. 10, 3201--3205.
[22]
Li, L., Halpern, J. Y., Bahl, P., Wang, Y.-M., and Wattenhofer, R. 2005. A cone-based distributed topology-control algorithm for wireless multi-hop networks. IEEE/ACM Trans. Netw. 13, 1, 147--159.
[23]
Li, X.-Y., Chen, H., Shu, Y., Chu, X., and Wu, Y.-W. 2006. Energy efficient routing with unreliable links in wireless networks. In Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Mobile Adhoc and Sensor Systems (MASS'06), 160--169.
[24]
Li, Z., Nandi, S., and Gupta, A. K. 2005. ECS: An enhanced carrier sensing mechanism for wireless ad hoc networks. Elsevier's Comput. Commun. 28, 17, 1970--1984.
[25]
Lin, S., Zhang, J., Zhou, G., Gu, L., He, T., and Stankovic, J. A. 2006. ATPC: Adaptive transmission power control for wireless sensor networks. In Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems (SenSys'06), 223--236.
[26]
Marina, M. K. and Das, S. R. 2001. On-Demand multipath distance vector routing in ad hoc networks. In Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Network Protocols (ICNP 01), 14--23.
[27]
Monks, J. P., Bharghavan, V., and Hwu, W.-M. W. 2001. A power controlled multiple access protocol for wireless packet networks. In Proceedings of the Annual Joint Conference of the IEEE Computer and Communications Societies (InfoCom), vol. 1, 219--228.
[28]
Muqattash, A. and Krunz, M. 2003. Power controlled dual channel (PCDC) medium access protocol for wireless ad hoc networks. In Proceedings of the Annual Joint Conference of the IEEE Computer and Communications Societies (InfoCom), vol. 1, 470--480.
[29]
Muqattash, A. and Krunz, M. 2005. POWMAC: A single-channel power-control protocol for throughput enhancement in wireless ad hoc networks. IEEE J. Selected Areas Commun. 23, 5, 1067--1084.
[30]
Perkins, C. E. and Royer, E. M. 1999. Ad-Hoc on-demand distance vector routing. In Proceedings of the 2nd IEEE Workshop on Mobile Computing Systems and Applications (WMCSA'99), 90--100.
[31]
Qiao, D., Choi, S., Jain, A., and Shin, K. G. 2003. Adaptive transmit power control in IEEE 802.11a wireless LANs. In Proceedings of the 57th IEEE Semiannual Vehicular Technology Conference (VTC Spring), vol. 1, 433--437.
[32]
Ramanathan, R. and Rosales-Hain, R. 2000. Topology control of multihop wireless networks using transmit power adjustment. In Proceedings of the Annual Joint Conference of the IEEE Computer and Communications Societies (InfoCom), vol. 2, 404--413.
[33]
Rappaport, T. S. 2001. Wireless Communication: Principles and Practice, 2nd ed. Prentice Hall.
[34]
Royer, E. M. and Perkins, C. E. 1999. Multicast operation of the ad-hoc on-demand distance vector routing protocol. In Proceedings of the 5th Annual ACM/IEEE International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking (MobiCom'99), 207--218.
[35]
Santi, P. 2005. Topology control in wireless ad hoc and sensor networks. ACM Comput. Surv. 37, 2, 164--194.
[36]
Schurgers, C. and Srivastava, M. B. 2001. Energy efficient routing in wireless sensor networks. In Proceedings of the IEEE Military Communications Conference (MilCom), vol. 1, 357--361.
[37]
Shah, R., Wolisz, A., and Rabaey, J. 2005. On the performance of geographical routing in the presence of localization errors. In Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC'05), 2979--2985.
[38]
Singh, S. and Raghavendra, C. S. 1998. PAMAS - Power aware multi-access protocol with signalling for ad hoc networks. ACM Comput. Commun. Rev. 28, 3, 5--26.
[39]
Singh, S., Woo, M., and Raghavendra, C. S. 1998. Power-Aware routing in mobile ad hoc networks. In Proceedings of the ACM Annual International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking (MobiCom'98). 181--190.
[40]
Son, D., Krishnamachari, B., and Heidemann, J. 2004. Experimental study of the effects of transmission power control and blacklisting in wireless sensor networks. In Proceedings of the 1st Annual IEEE Communications Society Conference on Sensor and Ad Hoc Communications and Networks (IEEE SECON'04), 289--298.
[41]
Witt, M. and Turau, V. 2006. The impact of location errors on geographic routing in sensor networks. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Wireless and Mobile Communications (ICWMC'06), 76--76.
[42]
Woo, A., Tong, T., and Culler, D. 2003. Taming the underlying challenges of reliable multihop routing in sensor networks. In Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems (SenSys'03). 14--27.
[43]
Xing, G., Lu, C., Zhang, Y., Huang, Q., and Pless, R. 2005. Minimum power configuration in wireless sensor networks. In Proceedings of the 6th ACM International Symposium on Mobile Ad Hoc Networking and Computing (MobiHoc'05), 390--401.
[44]
Xu, Y., Bien, S., Mori, Y., Heidemann, J., and Estrin, D. 2003. Topology control protocols to conserve energy in wireless ad hoc networks. Tech. rep. 6, University of California, Los Angeles, Center for Embedded Networked Computing. January.
[45]
Xu, Y., Heidemann, J., and Estrin, D. 2001. Geography-Informed energy conservation for ad hoc routing. In Proceedings of the 7th Annual International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking (MobiCom'01), 70--84.
[46]
Ye, F., Chen, A., Lu, S., and Zhang, L. 2001. A scalable solution to minimum cost forwarding in large sensor networks. In Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Computer Communications and Networks (ICCCN'01), 304--309.
[47]
Ye, F., Zhong, G., Cheng, J., Lu, S., and Zhang, L. 2003. PEAS: A robust energy conserving protocol for long-lived sensor networks. In Proceedings of the 23rd International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems (ICDCS'03), 28--37.
[48]
Ye, F., Zhong, G., Lu, S., and Zhang, L. 2005. GRAdient Broadcast: A robust data delivery protocol for large scale sensor networks. ACM Wireless Netw. 11, 3, 285--298.
[49]
Ye, W., Heidemann, J., and Estrin, D. 2002. An energy-efficient MAC protocol for wireless sensor networks. In Proceedings of the Annual Joint Conference of the IEEE Computer and Communications Societies (InfoCom), vol. 3, 1567--1576.

Cited By

View all
  • (2025)Self-rerouting sensor network for electronic skin resilient to severe damageNature Communications10.1038/s41467-025-56596-116:1Online publication date: 30-Jan-2025
  • (2024)Energy-Efficient and Latency-Aware Data Routing in Small-World Internet of Drone NetworksIEEE Transactions on Network and Service Management10.1109/TNSM.2024.345241421:6(6555-6565)Online publication date: 1-Dec-2024
  • (2023)Environmental Aware Thermal (EAT) Routing Protocol for Wireless Sensor NetworksWireless Communication Security10.1002/9781119777465.ch6(91-114)Online publication date: 11-Jan-2023
  • Show More Cited By

Recommendations

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Transactions on Sensor Networks
ACM Transactions on Sensor Networks  Volume 5, Issue 2
March 2009
284 pages
ISSN:1550-4859
EISSN:1550-4867
DOI:10.1145/1498915
Issue’s Table of Contents
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Journal Family

Publication History

Published: 03 April 2009
Accepted: 01 May 2008
Revised: 01 February 2008
Received: 01 August 2007
Published in TOSN Volume 5, Issue 2

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Check for updates

Author Tags

  1. Sensor networks
  2. energy conservation
  3. gradient
  4. power control
  5. robust performance
  6. state-free

Qualifiers

  • Research-article
  • Research
  • Refereed

Contributors

Other Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

  • Downloads (Last 12 months)5
  • Downloads (Last 6 weeks)0
Reflects downloads up to 16 Feb 2025

Other Metrics

Citations

Cited By

View all
  • (2025)Self-rerouting sensor network for electronic skin resilient to severe damageNature Communications10.1038/s41467-025-56596-116:1Online publication date: 30-Jan-2025
  • (2024)Energy-Efficient and Latency-Aware Data Routing in Small-World Internet of Drone NetworksIEEE Transactions on Network and Service Management10.1109/TNSM.2024.345241421:6(6555-6565)Online publication date: 1-Dec-2024
  • (2023)Environmental Aware Thermal (EAT) Routing Protocol for Wireless Sensor NetworksWireless Communication Security10.1002/9781119777465.ch6(91-114)Online publication date: 11-Jan-2023
  • (2021)Analysis on invulnerability of wireless sensor networks based on cellular automataReliability Engineering & System Safety10.1016/j.ress.2021.107616212(107616)Online publication date: Aug-2021
  • (2021)Analysis of security and energy efficiency for shortest route discovery in low‐energy adaptive clustering hierarchy protocol using Levenberg‐Marquardt neural network and gated recurrent unit for intrusion detection systemTransactions on Emerging Telecommunications Technologies10.1002/ett.399732:6Online publication date: 13-Jun-2021
  • (2020)FQ-AGO: Fuzzy Logic Q-Learning Based Asymmetric Link Aware and Geographic Opportunistic Routing Scheme for MANETsElectronics10.3390/electronics90405769:4(576)Online publication date: 29-Mar-2020
  • (2020)Invulnerability Analysis of Wireless Sensor Networks based on Cellular Automata2020 IEEE International Conference on Human-Machine Systems (ICHMS)10.1109/ICHMS49158.2020.9209541(1-4)Online publication date: Sep-2020
  • (2020)Modeling and Analysis of Cascading Node-Link Failures in Multi-Sink Wireless Sensor NetworksReliability Engineering & System Safety10.1016/j.ress.2020.106815(106815)Online publication date: Feb-2020
  • (2019)Full-Duplex MAC Protocol for CSMA/CA-Based Single-Hop Wireless NetworksSensors10.3390/s1910241319:10(2413)Online publication date: 27-May-2019
  • (2019)Environment-Fusion Multipath Routing Protocol For Wireless Sensor NetworksInformation Fusion10.1016/j.inffus.2019.06.001Online publication date: Jun-2019
  • Show More Cited By

View Options

Login options

Full Access

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

PDF

eReader

View online with eReader.

eReader

Figures

Tables

Media

Share

Share

Share this Publication link

Share on social media