Virtual-coordinate-based delivery-guaranteed routing protocol in three-dimensional wireless sensor networks

Abstract

Because of the wide range of applications, many geographic routing protocols have been proposed in three-dimensional 3D wireless sensor networks. However, all the methods require assistance from a global positioning system GPS, which is not always available. In this paper, we propose a method of constructing an axis-based virtual coordinate assignment in 3D wireless sensor networks ABVCap_3D that requires no GPS assistance. We also propose a routing protocol based on ABVCap_3D, which guarantees packet delivery in 3D networks. Using simulations, we evaluate the performance of ABVCap_3D routing and other well-known routing protocols, such as greedy-random-greedy routing, greedy-hull-greedy routing, and the routing based on axis-based virtual coordinate assignment in 2D wireless sensor networks ABVCap routing. Simulations show that ABVCap_3D routing requires significantly relative lower cost for guaranteeing packet delivery in comparison with ABVCap routing. Simulations also demonstrate that ABVCap_3D routing ensures a moderate ratio for routing path length to the shortest ideal path length. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.