Fermat point based data dissemination in sensor networks

Abstract

Disseminating data from multiple sources to multiple sinks is a very important application in sensor networks. In this paper, we present a new data dissemination scheme which uses the concept of the Fermat Point to construct a dissemination tree from one source (the root) to multiple sinks (the leaves). By sending data along the dissemination tree, the new scheme can conserve transmission energy, avoid collision and as a result reduce transmission delay. When sinks move, the proposed scheme can also adjust the dissemination tree topology to achieve high performance. Simulation runs are conducted to evaluate the performance of our new scheme and other related schemes, including Two‐Tier Data Dissemination (TTDD) and dynamic Delay‐constrained minimum‐Energy Dissemination (DEED). The collected result shows that our scheme can send data from a source to several sinks in a more efficient way and as a result saves more transmission energy and time than the other two schemes.