Anchor Node Based Virtual Modeling of Holes in Wireless Sensor Networks

Geographic routing has been addressed in many literatures of ad hoc sensor networks due to its efficiency and scalability. Void areas (holes) bring geographic routing several problems such as excessive energy consumption and data congestion of hole boundary nodes. Holes are hardly avoided in wireless sensor networks because of various actual geographical environments, e.g., puddles, buildings or obstacles, or uneven energy consumption, even physical destruction. To bypass holes, most existing geographic routing protocols tend to route data packets along the boundaries of holes by perimeter routing scheme. This scheme consumes more energy of the nodes on the boundaries of holes, thus possibly enlarging the holes, we call this hole diffusion problem. In this paper, we propose anchor node based virtual modeling of holes in wireless sensor networks to solve the hole problems faced by geographic routing in wireless sensor networks. Simulation results show that the proposed protocol is superior to other protocols in terms of packet deliver ratio, control overhead, average delivery delay, and energy consumption.