Position-Based Beaconless Routing in Wireless Sensor Networks

The process of beaconing used to gather information about position of sensors consumes extra energy due to unnecessary transmissions. In this paper, we propose a position-based beaconless routing (PBR) algorithm for wireless sensor networks that finds the path from source sensor to destination sensor and reduces the unnecessary transmissions. The next forwarder selection and packet forwarding algorithms are presented. Mathematical analysis of distribution of sensors in forward area, expected distance between sender and next forwarder, and average number of successful hops is provided. PBR uses distance and angle based neighbor selection at each forwarding step. It should be noted that PBR does not require use of extensive broadcast to select next forwarder sensor. The proposed protocol is simulated on MATLAB platform. Simulation results show that PBR performs better than LAR1, MFR, and GEDIR in terms of number of transmissions, end-to-end delay and consequently the energy consumption.