INTRODUCTION

Advances in technology has provided the availability of small and low-cost sensor
nodes with capability of sensing various types of physical and environmental conditions,
data processing, and wireless communication. Variety of sensing capabilities results in
profusion of application areas. However, the characteristics of Wireless Sensor Networks
(WSN) require more effective methods for data forwarding and processing.
The purpose of this report to provide general knowledge of WSNs, application
opportunities, and proposed routing for WSNs. Since there are too many routing algorithms
for data forwarding problem in WSNs, only some of them will be presented in details.
However, a full comparison of all methods will be given.

What is Wireless Sensor Network?

A wireless sensor network (WSN) is a wireless network consisting of distributed self-
organized autonomous devices using sensors to cooperatively monitor physical or
environmental conditions, such as vibration, motion, temperature, sound etc.
A WSN node mainly consists of four main parts:
1- Processing unit,
2- Sensor
3- Transceiver
4- Energy Source Unit
Depending on usage purpose there may be additional components such as
localization unit, energy producer, position changer etc. In the figure below, general
architecture of WSN node and a real example is represented

Figure 1: WSN Node acrhitecture and a real example.

Note.  Haroun, I.,Lambadaris, I., Hafez, R. (September, 2005). Building Wireless Sensor Networks. Retrieved March 26, 2007
from the World Wide Web: http://www.mwrf.com/Articles/ArticleID/11071/11071.html
 WSN nodes generally have small sizes up to the size of a coin. However, the sizes of
WSN nodes may be furtherly decreased with future advances in micro-electro-mechanical
systems (MEMS). Due to low bandwidth and low energy sources, transmission range of
nodes is restricted with about approximately 30 meters. Thus, dense deployment of nodes is
required for more reliable data transmission. The processing capacity of WSN nodes is also
low both because of data processed by WSN nodes are too small and energy is limited.
In contrast to multi-threaded/multi-process general-purpose operating systems,
WSN nodes use less complex operating systems and event-driven programming models. In
contrast to modern operating systems, which consist of millions of lines of code,   WSN
operating systems codes consists of just a few thousands of lines. Some examples of WSN
node operating systems are:
-          TinyOS
-          Contiki
-          MANTIS
-          BTnut
-          SOS
-          Nano-RK
Also it should be considered that, since WSN node hardware is similar to embedded systems, it is
possible to use some embedded operating systems such as eCos, uC/OS for sensor networks.

Application Areas
            There are many commercially available sensor types to monitor variety of
conditions including:
o Temperature
o Humidity
o Movement
o Lightning condition
o Pressure
o Soil makeup
o Noise levels
o Presence or absence of certain kinds of objects
o Mechanical stress levels on attached objects
o The current characteristics such as speed, direction and size of an object
As a result of availability of different kinds of sensors, there are various the
applications of WSNs. A general categorization of WSN applications may include military
applications, environmental applications, health applications and other commercial
applications.
Military Applications:
Dense deployment of disposable and low-cost sensor nodes makes WSN concept
beneficial for battle fields. Some military applications of WSNs are:

o Monitoring friendly forces, equipment and ammunition.

o Battlefield surveillance
o Exploration of opposing forces and terrain
o Targeting
o Battle damage assessment
o Nuclear, biological and chemical attack detection

Environmental Applications:
Although there are some other techniques to monitor environmental conditions,
random distribution and self organization of WSNs make them suitable for environmental
monitoring. Some applications include:
 o Biocomplexity mapping of environment
o Detection of natural disasters, such as fire, flood and eartquake detection
o Precision agriculture
o Habitat monitoring
o Pollution detection
o Planetary exploration

Health Applications:
Tiny sizes and light-weight structure of WSN nodes provides many functionality in health
applications, including:

o Telemonitoring of human physiological data

o Tracking and monitoring doctors and patients
o Drug administration

Other Commercial Applications:

In addition to all of above, there are many commercial applications of WSNs including

o Home automation for smart home environments

o Interactive museums
o Environmental control in buildings
o Detecting and monitoring burglary/ thieving
o Vehicle tracking and detection
o Managing inventory control

Routing Techniques
Sharing information between physically separated hosts/ sources requires both
physical connections between these hosts in terms of cables, links, etc. and a common
language, called protocol, to make these hosts understand each other. Networking concept
is built on variations of this principle. As in other networks, in WSNs we also need some
routing techniques / protocols between nodes to provide connectivity among them in order
to gather desired data. Although WSNs have some similarities with traditional networks,
currently available routing protocols can not be directly applied to WSNs because of some
characteristics of WSNs listed below:low processing capacity

o difficult operations conditions

o limited energy source
o low bandwidth
o huge population in WSNs
o Non-predetermined position of sensor nodes

Design Issues of WSNs

Design of routing protocols in WSNs is influenced by many challenging factors to be
addressed. Some of them are:

o Node deployment
o Data reporting method
o Node/link heterogeneity
 o Fault tolerance
o Scalability
o Transmission media
o Connectivity
o Data aggregation
o Quality of service

Figure 2: Routing protocols in WSNs.

Note. J. N. AL-Karaki, A. E. Kamal, “Routing Techniques in Wireless Sensor Networks: A Survey”, IEEE Wireless Communications,
Volume 11, Issue 6, Dec. 2004 Page(s):6 - 28 

As illustrated in figure 2, almost all routing methods can be classified into three categories depending on networks
structure:

o Flat routing
o Hierarchical routing
o Location-based routing

Furthermore, these protocols can be classified into subgroups listed below,

depending on protocol operation.

o Negotiation-based routing
o Multipath-based routing
o Query-based routing
o QoS-based routing
o Coherent based routing

               In addition to above, depending on route determination, routing protocols cans be classified
into four categories as follows:
 

o Proactive routing protocols: All routes are computed before they are used.
o Reactive routing protocols: Routes are computed as they are needed.
o Hybrid routing protocols: uses both proactive and reactive routing protocols.
o Cooperative routing protocols: Nodes send data to a central node where more processing
power and route information is available.  

Although in some special cases sensor nodes have mobilizers to change the position,
most of the sensor nodes are static, i.e. remains in same position, therefore it is preferable
to have table-driven routing protocols rather than reactive protocols.

Flat Routing
            In flat networks, each node typically plays the same role and sensor nodes
collaborate together to perform the sensing task. Due to the large number of such nodes, it
is not feasible to assign a global identifier to each node. This consideration has led to data
centric routing, where the Base Station (BS) sends queries to certain regions and waits for
data from the sensors located in the selected regions. Two main types of algorithms in flat
routing are flooding, where each node forwards data to all its neighbor so to much
redundant data occurs, and data-centric routing where there is no global identifiers for
nodes, instead data is identified using attribute based naming.

Sensor Protocols for Information via Negotiation ( SPIN )

This protocol uses the idea of distributing only the data that other nodes do not have,
assuming the nodes in close proximity have similar data. Thus nodes avoid sending redundant data.
Protocol starts when SPIN node gathers new data. Node broadcasts an ADV message containing
metadata of newly obtained data. Any neighbor interested in that data sends a REQ message. After
that the actual DATA is sent to neighbor node. Operation of SPIN network is illustrated in figure 2.

Figure 3: The SPIN protocol.

Note.Wendi Heinzelman, Joanna Kulik, and Hari Balakrishnan, Adaptive Protocols for Information Dissemination in Wireless Sensor Networks,
Proc. 5th ACM/IEEE Mobicom Conference, Seattle, WA, August 1999.

 Important advantage of SPIN protocol is that each node only knows its single-hop
neighbors therefore topological changes in network localized, i.e. does not affect whole
network. On the other hand, SPIN protocol does not guarantee delivery of data because
intermediate nodes between source and destination nodes may not be interested in
advertised data, therefore such data may not be forwarded to destination.

Directed Diffusion:
In spite of SPIN, where availability of data is advertised, in directed diffusion the BS broadcasts interest
which describes a task required to be done by the network. Up on receiving the interest, each sensor node then stores
the interest entry in its cache and sets up a gradient toward itself to the nodes from which it receives the interest.
When a node has data for broadcasted interest, it sends data through the interest’s gradient choosing only best paths
to avoid further flooding. The steps of directed diffusion process are illustrated in Figure 4.
 Figure 4 : Example of Directed Diffusion. (a) Propagate interest, (b) set up gradient and (c) send data.
I. F. Akyildiz, W. Su, Y. Sankarasubramaniam, and E. Cayirci. Wireless sensor networks: a survey. Computer Networks, 38(4):393–422, April
2002. 

Minimum Cost Forwarding Algorithm ( MCFA ):

In MCFA each node records the estimated least cost from itself to Base Station. Initially at each node, the
least cost is set to infinity ( ∞ ). The BS broadcasts a message with the cost set zero. Whenever a node receives the
broadcast message, compares the cost of message with its estimated least cost. If the estimated cost on the message
plus the cost of current link is less than what the node has, the estimate on the message and the estimate recorded by
the node is updated and then message is broadcasted to neighbors, otherwise the broadcast message is discarded.
The figure 5 illustrates steps of this process.

Figure 5: Minimum Cost Forwarding Algorithm

a) each node set its least cost to BS as ∞
b) BS broadcast a message with least cost set to zero
c) if cost of message+link cost < local cost, update local cost and cost on the message, then re-broadcast the
message
d) if cost of message+link cost >= local cost, discart message  

 
Important disadvantage of MCFA is that, the nodes that are far away from the base station may get more
broadcasts than those close to the BS. A solution to this problem is to use a backoff algorithm to constrain nodes
from sending broadcasts until a * lc  time elapsed from the time when message is updated, where a denotes a
predefined constant and lc  is the link cost of received message.
Gradient Based Routing ( GBR): The paradigm in GBR is calculation of a parameter, called height of the
node, which is the minimum path between node and Base Station (BS) in terms of the number of hops between
them. The difference between a node’s height and the height of its neighbor is called gradient of the link between
them. While forwarding data, nodes choose the links which have largest gradient. 

Figure 6: Gradient Based Routing. 

 
In order to prolong network life time, GBR balances the traffic over the links using three different data
distribution techniques:

1. Stochastic Scheme: if there are two or more links having same gradient, randomly choose one of them.
2. Energy Based Scheme: if the available energy of the node decreases below of a certain level, the node
increases its height to prevent other nodes sending data to it.
3. Stream Based Scheme: new streams are not forwarded to the nodes which are already being a part of other
streams.

Other flat routing techniques are:

o  Information-driven sensor querying and constrained anisotropic diffusion routing

o COUGAR
o ACQUIRE
o Energy-Aware Routing

Hierarchical Routing
Although this type of routing methods originally proposed in wired networks with
their special advantages related to scalability and efficient communication, they also provide
energy-efficient routing in WSNs. Some techniques that belong to this family are:

o LEACH protocol
o  Power-Efficient Gathering in Sensor Information Systems
o Threshold-Sensitive Energy Efficient Protocols
o Small Minimum energy communication network ( MECN )
o Self-organizing protocol
o Hierarchical power-aware routing
o Two-Tier Data Dissemination
 Location-Based Routing
In this type of protocols sensor nodes are addressed depending on their locations.
Relative coordinates of neighboring nodes is obtained either by exchanging information
between neighbor nodes or by directly communicating with a Global Positioning System
(GPS). Some techniques that belong to this family are:

o Geographic Adaptive Fidelity

o Geographic and Energy Aware Routing (GEAR)
o MFR, DIR, and GEDIR
o The Greedy Other Adaptive Face Routing (GOAFR)
o SPAN

Conclusion
In this report I have tried to explain main concepts of WSN, its features,
applications, and finally some proposed routing protocols.  I have mentioned that flexible
and low-cost structures of WSNs make them applicable for various types of projects. The
current situation of WSN can be considered under three different aspects
1) Electrical engineering perspective: hardware structure and power consumption of
WSN can be minimized further using benefits of nanotechnology.
2) Network engineering perspective: although there are lots of proposed routing
methods for WSNs, still new methods are need and currently existing ones need to be
improved.
3) Project managing perspective: benefits of WSN, as a whole or partially can be
used in various projects