A Robust Self-Organizing Tree-Based Routing Protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks

For a wireless sensor network (WSN), routing protocols not only affect the reliability and real-time data transmission but also affect the energy consumption of communication and the survival time of the entire network. In this paper, a routing protocol is proposed that combines virtual potential energy with local density of nodes and sleep-wake-up mechanism. The proposed routing protocol is self-organizing and robust. The routing protocol allows nodes to dynamically join or leave the network and enables nodes to automatically transmit information along the shortest path to reach a corresponding sink. The protocol can be applied in scenarios of single sink, multiple sinks, and three-dimensional WSNs. At the same time, the protocol takes a sleep-wake-up mechanism into account, makes a significant decrease in total network traffic, and achieves energy-saving as much as possible. Examples are given in detail to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed routing protocol.