Hop-distance based addressing and routing for dense sensor networks without location information

One of the most challenging problems in wireless sensor networks is the design of scalable and efficient routing algorithms without location information. The use of specialized hardware and/or infrastructure support for localization is costly and in many deployment scenarios infeasible. In this study, the wave mapping coordinate (WMC) system to address the localization problem is introduced for dense sensor networks and a highly efficient routing algorithm applicable to WMC systems is proposed. The performance of the WMC system is evaluated through simulations and compared with the performance of geographic routing without location information (GWL). The WMC system is found to be highly scalable and efficient with a simple system set-up procedure. Simulation studies confirm the high routing performance of WMC systems which is comparable to the performance of greedy geographic routing with the availability of location information. 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.