LEMA: Localized Energy-Efficient Multicast Algorithm based on Geographic Routing

Most usage scenarios for ad hoc and sensor networks require some degree of one-to-many or many-to-many interactions. In particular, for the case of sensor networks there is a number of scenarios in which a node has to send the same data to multiple destinations. Given that sensor networks have very limited resources, multicasting is a very interesting approach to deliver the same data packet to multiple destinations while reducing the amount of bandwidth and power consumption. In this paper, we present LEMA (localized energy-efficient multicast algorithm), a new energy-efficient multicast routing protocol based on geographic routing. The protocol is localized, as long as nodes currently routing multicast data packets are only required to know the coordinates of the destinations (locally obtained from the data packet to route) and the positions of its next hops. The protocol uses a localized source routing scheme to reach next hops which, unlike traditional geographic routing schemes, allows for the use of neighbors not providing advance to reduce the overall energy consumption. Our simulation results show that for networks with enough density the protocol is able to outperform even well-known centralized heuristics such as minimum incremental power (MIP) as well as shortest path tree (SPT) based on energy. For low-density networks, the protocol is still competitive for most scenarios