Virtual Domain and Coordinate Routing in Wireless Sensor Networks

Since the effectiveness of the routing scheme directly affects resource (e.g. energy, bandwidth, and memory) usage in wireless sensor networks, research works on routing protocols have received considerable attention recently. In this paper, we propose a location-free point-to-point routing scheme, called virtual domain and coordinate routing (VDCR), in wireless sensor networks. VDCR applies the concepts of the virtual domain and the virtual coordinate to design its distributed assignment protocol and the location-free routing protocol. That is, the assignment protocol assigns each sensor node the virtual coordinate to represent the location in a network and the virtual domain to maintain the information about the existing shortest path that has been established during the coordinate assignment. Our VDCR is able to efficiently discover the routing path based on the assigned domains and coordinates. The simulations show that the routing path of VDCR is shorter than ABVCap by 62%-70%. Besides, VDCR require 63%-89% preprocess overhead of ABVCap. For realistic network topologies with obstacles, VDCR can improve the routing path by 64% and up to 96%, compared with GPSR that requires physical location information.