Small World-Based Query Mechanism

The majority of routing protocols for wireless sensor networks attempt to obtain optimal or shortest paths that lead to target resources. It is energy inefficient to search and establish those paths. CZQueen, a Small World-based resource query mechanism, is presented to reduce energy overhead of resource queries in large-scale and location-free sensor networks. Based on the Small World Model, CZQueen uses contacts as shortcuts to reduce the average path length of networks. The mechanism introduces Tight-Zone to cut down the number of shortcuts, and gives relative positions of vicinage nodes to achieve a sense of direction without location information in queries. We execute a set of simulation experiments used to evaluate performance of CZQueen. Analytical performance evaluation shows that CZQueen achieves high performance in workload balance with the same algorithmic complexity as CAPTURE. The simulation results indicate that CZQueen has lower energy overhead compared to ZRP and CAPTURE, which is robust and scalable as well.