Wireless sensor networks routing over zones

In this paper, we propose a routing protocol for wireless sensor networks based on a two-level, zone-based architecture. DV is applied in both intra-zone and inter-zone routing, based on the hop metric. Our solution is original because it is instrumentation-free (sensors are both localization and energy unaware) and completely distributed. We show performances of the proposed algorithm evaluating the overhead generated by the construction of the infrastructure needed in routing. Simulations for MICA2 sensors have given us indications on the energy consumption - almost 4*10^-4% of the total battery capacity, on the scalability property of the algorithm and on the memory size of the data structure used for routing - almost 13% of the RAM memory. Moreover, memory constraints allow us to determine a lower bound for the number of zones.