The Research On Energy-aware Anycast Routing Algorithm In Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless integrated sensor networks, which include collecting, managing data and communication, are used more and more widely for its low cost and convenient deployment. Nowadays the research concerning each aspect of sensor networks is fairly active. Routing protocol is one of the key problems in sensor networks. Anycast is a new kind of communication services, which can balance network load and improve network performances. This thesis mainly focuses on the energy-aware distributed anycast algorithms.According to the characteristics of sensor networks and anycast, this thesis firstly analyses some anycast routing protocols of sensor networks in existence. With the standpoint of consuming the energy balancedly in order to prolong the lifetime of sensor networks, the thesis then presents two routing algorithms respectively based on weight and ant colony algorithm. In the weight-based anycast routing algorithm, weight is caculated according to the energy consumption of data transfer on the path, the minimum hops to the nearest sink and the remaining energy of neighbor nodes. The algorithm chooses the minimum weight path to transmit data. It lets more sensor nodes to transmit data by utilizing weight.So it can banace the energy consumption of sensor networks and also prolong the lifetime of them.The anycast routing algorithm based on ant colony algorithm calculates transfer probability according to the pheromone of network paths, the minimum hops to the nearest sink and the remaining energy of neighbor nodes. And it chooses the path of maximal transfer probability. The algorithm utilizes the characteristics of distributed parallel searching for paths and positive feedback of ant colony algorithm to select paths, and updates the pheromone of network paths according to the local and global update rules of ACA. So it can control the distribution of the network traffic, balance the network load and prolong the network lifetime.In order to verify the validity of the two algorithms, we propose a network simulation model on which the two anycast algorithms are simulated and evaluated. Results in different simulation networks show that both algorithms can balance network load, prolong the network lifetime and provide better network performances. Comparing the two algorithms, the weight-based algorithm has longer network lifetime, and the algorithm based on ant colony algorithm has better performances inpath length, delay and energy consumption.