GRAViTy: Geographic Routing around Voids in Sensor Networks

Abstract

Nodes in sensor networks do not have enough topology information to make efficient routing decisions. To relay messages through intermediate sensors, geographic routing has been proposed as such a solution. Its greedy nature, however, makes routing inefficient especially in the presence of topology voids or holes. In this paper we present GRAViTy (Geographic Routing Around Voids In any TopologY of sensor networks), a simple greedy forwarding algorithm that combines compass routing along with a mechanism that allows packets to explore the area around voids and bypass them without significant communication overhead. Using extended simulation results we show that our mechanism outperforms the right‐hand rule for bypassing voids and that the resulting paths found well approximate the corresponding shortest paths. GRAViTy uses a cross‐layered approach to improve routing paths for subsequent packets based on experience gained by former routing decisions. Furthermore, our protocol responds to topology changes, i.e. failure of nodes, and efficiently adjusts routing paths towards the destination.

Citation

Dimitriou, T. and Krontiris, I. (2006), "GRAViTy: Geographic Routing around Voids in Sensor Networks", International Journal of Pervasive Computing and Communications, Vol. 2 No. 4, pp. 351-361. https://doi.org/10.1108/17427370780000165