Connectionless probabilistic (CoP) routing: an efficient protocol for mobile wireless ad-hoc sensor networks

We present a protocol that manages wireless ad-hoc sensor networks in several scenarios including large scale, high density and high mobility deployments. One of the main applications is to communicate important information from inaccessible areas by spreading just "enough" mobile sensors which must self-configure and assemble. According to our protocol, connectionless probabilistic (CoP) routing, the information is routed in a multi-hop, cluster level fashion by enabling each sensor to make individual decisions regarding its mode of operation. The aim is to prolong the network\´s lifetime by minimizing the energy spent for each communication. CoP is capable of addressing high mobility requirements as it is completely independent of any kind of topological knowledge and control messages. We show by extended experiments that CoP performs very well in terms of consumed energy by comparing it to a standard directed flooding and a greedy forwarding protocol.