On the Influence of the Propagation Channel in the Performance of Energy-Efficient Geographic Routing Algorithms for Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN)

Pablo Padilla de la Torre; José Camacho; Gabriel Maciá-Fernández; Jesús Esteban Díaz Verdejo; Pedro García-Teodoro; Carlos Gómez-Calero

Abstract:

In this paper, the influence of the features of the propagation channel in the performance of energy-efficient routing algorithms for wireless sensor networks is studied. Although there are a lot of works regarding energy-efficient routing protocols, almost no reference to realistic propagation channel models and influence is made in the literature. Considering that the propagation channel may affect the efficiency of the different energy-efficient routing algorithms, different propagation scenarios are proposed in this work, from the most simplistic free-space propagation model to more complex ones. The latter includes the effects of multipath propagation, shadowing, fading, etc. In addition, spatial diversity transmission/reception models are considered to mitigate the effects of hard propagation fading. Some results are provided comparing the performance of several energy-efficient routing algorithms in different scenarios.

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