Location-based cooperative relaying in wireless sensor networks

In this work, we present a novel routing protocol for energy constrained multi-hop wireless sensor networks. The proposed mechanism exploits the broadcast nature of the wireless channel to enable cooperative relaying in an on-demand manner. It also introduces the concept of leapfrogging that aids in circumventing links with weak channels. Further, in order to achieve energy efficiency, we define a novel metric that takes into account both location as well as channel state information for next-hop selection. The protocol is completely decentralized and preliminary analysis shows that the proposed approach offers significant benefits by reducing the number of (re)transmissions required to reach a destination. This translates into network-wide energy savings that can potentially increase the network lifetime.