An energy efficient routing algorithm (X-Centric routing) for sensor networks

Abstract

Recent developments in wireless communications and electronics technologies have enabled the progress in low cost sensor networks. Sensor networks differ from traditional networks in several ways such as the severe energy constraints redundant low-rate date and many-to-one flows that the sensor networks require. One of the major challenges facing the design of a routing protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) is to find the most reliable path between the sources and the sink node by considering the energy awareness as an essential design parameter. This paper introduces a new routing protocol called as X-Centric routing by considering the above parameters. Under the X-Centric routing the decision making mechanism depends on the capacity of the sink node by switching between address-centric routing (AC-Routing) and data-centric routing (DC-Routing). The design tradeoffs between energy and communication overhead savings in these routing algorithms have been considered by considering the advantages and performance issues of each routing algorithm.