FERMA: An Efficient Geocasting Protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks with Multiple Target Regions

Abstract

Some sensor applications are interested in collecting data from multiple regions. For supporting such applications with multiple target regions, most conventional protocols are based on either a network flooding or multiple unicastig to cover those more than one target region. Either one will result in a lot of redundant packets to transmit by energy scared sensor nodes. To alleviate this problem, we propose a novel geocasting scheme which can make a suitable shared path among multiple target regions. We utilize the theorem of “Fermat Point,” in order to find an optimal junction point branching into each region. By using this shared path, an interest dissemination can be performed very efficiently. Our simulation study shows that the proposed scheme FERMA reduces a lot of network traffic and achieves significant energy saving as the number of target regions increase.