Localized Routing Approach to Bypass Holes in Wireless Sensor Networks

Geographic greedy forwarding (GF) technique has been widely used by many algorithms for routing in sensor networks because of its high efficiency resulting from its local and memoryless nature. Hence, it ensures scalability which is a fundamental requirement for protocol applicability to large-scale sensor networks with limited resources. Nevertheless, GF suffers from a serious drawback when packets, based on geographic distance, cannot be delivered; i.e., the so-called “local minimum phenomenon”. This problem has been tackled in previous research works to guarantee packet delivery by routing around the boundaries of the hole, but at an excessive consumption of control overheads. In this paper, we propose a novel approach that exploits GF technique and guarantees at the same time packet delivery (handles the local minimum situations). Our approach is of a local nature that does not retain memories and performs better than the state-of-the-art approaches in terms of its ability to guarantee packet delivery and to derive efficient routing paths. We provide, in this paper, proof of its correctness (packet delivery guaranty) while showing, through simulations, its performance effectiveness in terms of reducing path lengths, average end-to-end delays, and overall energy consumption.