GRMR: Greedy regional multicast routing for wireless sensor networks

Abstract

Information Centric Networking (ICN) is a promising architecture as an alternative paradigm to traditional IP networking. The innovative concepts, such as named data, name-based routing, and innetwork caching bring lots of benefits to Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs). Simple and robust communication model of ICN, based on interest/data messages exchange, is appealing to be deployed in WSNs. However, ICN architectures are designed for power supplied network devices rather than resource-constrained sensor nodes. Introducing ICN-liked architecture to WSNs needs to rethink the naming scheme and forwarding strategy to meet the requirements of energy efficiency and failure recovery. This paper presents a light weight data centric routing mechanism (GRMR) for interest dissemination and data delivery in location-aware WSNs. A simple naming scheme gives assistance for routing decision by individual nodes. Greedy routing engaging with regional multicast mechanism provides an efficient data centric routing approach. The performance is analytically evaluated and simulated in NS-2. The results indicate that GRMR achieves significant energy efficiency under investigated scenarios.