A near optimum RREQ flooding algorithm in sensor networks

Most of the energy efficient routing algorithms proposed for sensor networks are reactive routing algorithms. By definition, reactive algorithms are those in which routes are constructed whenever there is data transmission. In such algorithms, to transmit data packets from a certain transmitter to the corresponding receiver, efficient route is constructed using RREQ delivery. This delivery is performed via flooding and modified flooding algorithms. One of the most important criteria of such flooding algorithm is not to miss the best final route during RREQ delivery. Most of major algorithms ignored this fact and instead tried to minimize energy consumption during flooding algorithm. But constructing an energy efficient final route is more important than minimizing energy consumption during RREQ delivery especially for static networks. In this paper, first analytical expressions for expected transmission time in exponential backoff system are derived. Afterwards using the mentioned analytical expressions, an efficient RREQ delivery flooding strategy is proposed to improve the optimality of the final route. The proposed algorithm concommited with our previous power control algorithm results in an efficient routing algorithm with improvement in all parameters from state of the art routing algorithms for sensor networks. Simulation results corroborate the claim