An Efficient Addressing Scheme and Its Routing Algorithm for a Large-Scale Wireless Sensor Network

Abstract

So far, various addressing and routing algorithms have been extensively studied for wireless sensor networks (WSNs), but many of them were limited to cover less than hundreds of sensor nodes. It is largely due to stringent requirements for fully distributed coordination among sensor nodes, leading to the wasteful use of available address space. As there is a growing need for a large-scale WSN, it will be extremely challenging to support more than thousands of nodes, using existing standard bodies. Moreover, it is highly unlikely to change the existing standards, primarily due to backward compatibility issue. In response, we propose an elegant addressing scheme and its routing algorithm. While maintaining the existing address scheme, it tackles the wastage problem and achieves no additional memory storage during a routing. We also present an adaptive routing algorithm for location-aware applications, using our addressing scheme. Through a series of simulations, we prove that our approach can achieve two times lesser routing time than the existing standard in a ZigBee network.