An Efficient Cluster-Based Data Dissemination Scheme in Wireless Sensor Networks

Existing data dissemination protocols adopted flooding to propagate interests and find forwarding paths in wireless sensor networks (WSNs), which cause large energy consumption. To relieve this problem, we propose an efficient cluster-based data dissemination (ECDD) scheme. In the proposed ECDD, besides piggyback control information into interests to perform on-demand passive clustering, we also use control information to set each node a hop count for assisting a node to select next forwarding node with the least hop count to the sink. In this way, a shortest path to forward sensed data back to the sink can be found. Simulation results show that the proposed ECDD is 61.30% better than DD, a classical approach, and 22.33% better than ELPC in terms of average dissipated energy. Furthermore, our approach is 57.45% and 23.49% better than DD and ELPC, respectively, in terms of average delay. The proposed ECDD is feasible for applications of long-term monitoring and real-time response, such as a community health care system and rescue operation in a disaster area.