A scalable sensor network using a polar coordinate system

Due to the quick development of chip design and antenna manufacturing techniques, wireless facilities, such as wireless sensors, have become significantly smaller and cheaper than before. Their usage has also consequently been widely enriched, such as in the areas of healthcare and forest monitoring. A wireless sensor network (WSN) is often used to monitor a specific environment for a specific purpose. However, how to effectively utilize the limited resources in a sensor, also in a WSN, is crucial. In a WSN, geographical information is usually employed to locate a node and its surroundings. In this article, we propose a system, named relative position for sensor routing using polar-coordinates (Rp(2)), that deploys a polar coordinate system to identify sensor positions and route network packets. A sensor ID that carries geographical metadata can be helpful in positioning a sensor. (C) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.