Ripple routing: An on-demand routing protocol for in-network query processing on wireless sensor networks

In-network query processing on wireless sensor networks handles queries in a distributed manner by decomposing them into subqueries, which are evaluated on groups of hosts (nodes) on the network. Reducing the amount of nodes to which (sub)queries as well as data are sent in the network is essential to reduce the communication cost, crucial for restricted devices. This paper proposes an on-demand routing protocol, called ripple routing, which pushes ripple after ripple when necessary to reduce communication in the network. Ripple routing accomplishes a distributed three-phase on-demand route discovery mechanism at the price of a small overhead for route discovery traffic. Our performance analysis shows the benefits of ripple routing over DSR in terms of communication.