In many situations, it is likely that most nodes will not be able to have
a direct connection with the sink. In order to address these issues, a multi-hop
distributed routing protocol needs to be implemented to relay the information
in a quick and power e?±cient manner.
Routing protocols have been extensively studied in traditional areas of
wireless voice and data communication networks. Wireless networks are classified
as either ad hoc or infrastructured. Infrastructured wireless networks
have a central manager (base station or access point) controlling the communications.
In such networks, each node first communicates with the manager
regardless of whom the node is trying to contact. The base station acts as a
tra?±c controller and also as a gateway to other infrastructured networks. The
characteristics of infrastructured networks di?®er considerably from those of
wireless sensor networks. For instance, sensor networks usually have a much
larger number of nodes, the nodes have much more limited processing capability,
and are very prone to failures. The nodes in a wireless sensor network
need to be able to communicate information e?±ciently with their neighbors
without a centralized communication mechanism. In ad hoc wireless networks,
nodes talk to each other without the use of a centralized infrastructure, which
is similar to a sensor network scenario. The existing ad hoc routing protocols
provide an excellent basis from which to start working on the design of e?±-
cient routing protocols for sensor networks.
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