Modelling Data-Centric Routing in Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract

Sensor networks differ from traditional networks in several ways: sensor networks have severe energy constraints, redundant low-rate data, and many-to-one flows. The end-to-end routing schemes that have been proposed in the literature for mobile ad-hoc networks are not appropriate under these settings. Data-centric technologies are needed that perform in-network aggregation of data to yield energy-efficient dissemination. In this paper we model data-centric routing and compare its performance with traditional end-to-end routing schemes. We examine the impact of source-destination placement and communication network density on the energy costs, delay, and robustness of data aggregation. We show that data-centric routing offers significant performance gains across a wide range of operational scenarios.