An entropy coding based hybrid routing algorithm for data aggregation in wireless sensor networks

This paper considers the correlated data routing problem in a wireless sensor network (WSN) and proposes an entropy coding based hybrid routing algorithm to solve the problem. The proposed hybrid routing algorithm takes into account both the correlation structure of the data between different sensor nodes and the path-cost of a node, and combines an entropy coding based routing algorithm and the shortest-path-tree (SPT) routing algorithm. Specifically, for a node that is away from the sink, it employs the entropy coding based algorithm to determine the next-hop node, while for a node close to the sink it employs the SPT routing algorithm to determine the next-hop node. Simulation results show that the proposed hybrid routing algorithm can significantly improve the overall transmission cost and the total amount of data transmitted in the network as compared with the SPT routing algorithm.