Tendency-Based Geographic Routing for Sensor Networks

As sensor networks are deployed over various terrains, the complexity of their topology continues to grow. Holes in networks often cause existing geographic routing algorithms to fail. In this paper, we propose a novel geographic routing algorithm called Greedy Forwarding with VIrtual Position (GF-ViP). We introduce virtual position as the middle position of all neighbors of a node. Instead of comparing nodes' geographic position, GF-ViP employs virtual position for selecting the next hop. Such virtual position reflects the neighborhood of a sensor node, as well as the tendency of further forwarding. For network with routing holes, GF-ViP significantly increases success rate of packet routing, while the overhead is kept low. Furthermore, multiple levels of virtual position can be obtained with localized iteration. We propose the Greedy Forwarding with Multi-level Virtual Position (GF-MVP) algorithm. According to various context information of a sensor network, different levels of virtual position can be used alternatively to increase success rate of packet routing in sensor networks.