SWR: Smartness provided by simple, efficient, and self-adaptive algorithm

Resource limitations of sensor nodes in wireless sensor networks (WSN) bound the performance on its implementations. Main concern becomes utilizing these limited resources (CPU, memory, bandwidth, battery) as efficient as possible. Their efficiency is mostly affected by the applied routing algorithm, which carries gathered data to inclined/intended destinations. In this paper, a novel routing algorithm, stateless weight routing (SWR), is proposed. The SWR differs from other protocols in many ways. Major feature of the SWR is its simplicity. It is a completely stateless protocol without requiring any network or neighborhood information for routing. This feature decreases packet transmissions and energy consumption dramatically. For reliability, data flows to the sink node over multiple paths. Moreover, nodes have the ability of recovering from voids. Nodes process each packet independently and apply an adaptive approach according to the current conditions. These mechanisms are part of the applied simple routing algorithm, the SWR. The resultant of these features assures flexibility and smartness at nodes and in the network. Therefore, topological changes have a little effect on data packet transmissions. Performance evaluation of the proposed approach shows that the SWR is scalable for WSNs whose topology change instantly and frequently as well as remain stationary.