A simple and efficient MAC-routing integrated algorithm for sensor network

In sensor network the minimization of the power consumption is a fundamental key. Considering network with a number of wireless sensor spanning from hundreds to thousands, the complexity of the communication algorithm drives both the hardware requirement and the whole network cost. This paper is devoted to present a new communication algorithm able to merge the MAC and the routing mechanisms into a single layer. In such an algorithm each node has knowledge of its location and it uses this information in order to take decision on the path to reach the destination. The nodes has a sleeping capability to save energy, and an active node with pending packet selects, from the listening nodes in its coverage area, the best relay with respect to a given merit factor based on the distance to the destination and the remaining energy in such a relay. All the nodes are not coordinated and possible collisions during the relay selection may force to have a suboptimal relay use. In the paper this algorithm is described, analyzed and some simulation are performed in order to show its effectiveness. This system uses a single radio resource while a similar method proposed in Literature uses a busy tone approach with two radios and a different relay selection algorithm. Some comparisons with this more complex method is reported showing that the performance are very close in practical environment configuration, even if the complexity of our proposal is less.