Forwarding Schemes for EM-based Wireless Nanosensor Networks in the Terahertz Band

Abstract

Electromagnetic-based Wireless NanoSensor Networks (EM-WNSNs) operating in the TeraHertz (THz) band (0.1 THz--10 THz) has been in focus recently because of potential applications in nano-scale scenarios. However, one major hurdle for advancing nano-scale communications is the lack of suitable networking protocols to address current and future needs of nanonetworks. Working together with routing that finds the path from a source to destination, forwarding is a networking task of sending a packet to the next-hop along its path to the destination. While forwarding has been straightforward in traditional wired networks, forwarding schemes now play a vital role in determining wireless network performance. In this paper, we propose a channel-aware forwarding scheme and compare it against traditional forwarding schemes for wireless sensor networks. To fit the peculiarity of EM-WNSNs, the channel-aware forwarding scheme makes forwarding decision considering the frequency selective pecularities of the THz channel which are undesirable from a networking perspective. It is shown through simulation that the proposed channel-aware forwarding scheme outperforms traditional forwarding schemes in terms of the end-to-end capacity while maintaining comparable performance for delay.