One of the limitations of wireless sensor nodes is their inherent limited energy resource. Besides maximizing the lifetime of the sensor node, it is preferable to distribute the energy dissipated throughout the wireless sensor network in order to minimize maintenance and maximize overall system performance. Any communication protocol that involves synchronization of peer nodes incurs some overhead for setting up the communication. We introduce a new algorithm, e3D (energy-efficient Distributed Dynamic Diffusion routing algorithm), and compare it to two other algorithms, namely directed, and random clustering communication. We take into account the setup costs and analyze the energy-efficiency and the useful lifetime of the system. In order to better understand the characteristics of each algorithm and how well e3D really performs, we also compare e3D with its optimum counterpart and an optimum clustering algorithm. The benefit of introducing these ideal algorithms is to show the upper bound on performance at the cost of astronomical prohibitive synchronization costs. We compare the algorithms in terms of system lifetime, power dissipation distribution, cost of synchronization, and simplicity of the algorithm. Our simulation results show that e3D performs comparable to its optimal counterpart while having significantly less overhead.

• Ioan Raicu, Loren Schwiebert, Scott Fowler, Sandeep K.S. Gupta. “Local Load Balancing for Globally Efficient Routing in Wireless Sensor Networks”, International Journal of Distributed Sensor Networks, 1: 163–185, 2005.

• Ioan Raicu, Loren Schwiebert, Scott Fowler, Sandeep K.S. Gupta. “e3D: An Energy-Efficient Routing Algorithm for Wireless Sensor Networks”, IEEE ISSNIP 2004 (The International Conference on Intelligent Sensors, Sensor Networks and Information Processing), Melbourne, Australia, December 2004; top 10% of conference papers, extended version published in International Journal of Distributed Sensor Networks 2005.

• Ioan Raicu. “Efficient Even Distribution of Power Consumption in Wireless Sensor Networks”, ISCA 18th International Conference on Computers and Their Applications, CATA 2003, 2003, Honolulu, Hawaii, USA.

• Ioan Raicu.  “Routing Algorithms for Wireless Sensor Networks” Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing 2002, GHC2002, 2002, British Columbia, Canada.