Energy-Efficient Data-Aware Routing Protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks

An energy-efficient and data-aware routing protocol is proposed for wireless sensor networks. In the proposed scheme, data is sensed as either normal or urgent according to its time exigency, then different data delivery mechanisms are used depending on what kind of data is sensed, thereby improving both the energy-efficiency and reliability of a wireless sensor network. First, normal data is delivered to the sink using a single-path-based data forwarding mechanism to improve the energy-efficiency, as this data is not as important or contingent on time. Meanwhile, urgent data is transmitted to the sink using a hop-count-based directional flooding mechanism to guarantee high reliability, as this data must reach the sink. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme can achieve a significant improvement in energy consumption, along with high reliability for urgent data delivery.