An Energy Efficient Directed Diffusion Routing Protocol

Directed diffusion is a classic data-centric routing protocol in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs). In directed diffusion based WSNs, data generated by sensor nodes is named by attribute-value pairs. A sink requests data by sending interests. The data that match the interests are then "drawn" down towards the sink. Intermediate nodes cache or transform data, and direct the interests based on previously cached data. In general, energy resources are limited in WSNs, therefore, energy saving becomes the most important consideration in designing routing protocols. In the directed diffusion, the path reinforcement scheme is designed for minimum delay and maximum data received during a certain period of time. However, the communication cost and energy balance over the whole WSNs have not been paid enough attention. To address these issues, we propose a novel path reinforcement scheme. Our proposed protocol is simulated and compared with the directed diffusion. The simulation results show that the proposed protocol is outperform directed diffusion in energy efficiency, energy balance over WSNs, and network lifetime. Key Words­ Directed diffusion, Routing protocol, Energy efficient, Reinforcement