An Energy Aware Ladder Diffusion Routing Algorithm for WSNs

In Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs), energy efficiency is one of the most important factors to improve the networks' performance, and well designed routing algorithm can obviously modify the WSNs' energy efficiency. In this paper, some typical existing routing algorithms are analyzed, and the advantages and defects of these algorithms are introduced. According to these analyses an energy aware ladder direction diffuse routing algorithm named EALD is proposed. In EALD, the nodes' residual energy is taken into account when message packet selects transmitting route. And to ensure nodes' store acute energy information, a special packet head and a special link which storing neighbor nodes are defined to update nodes' energy information when transmitting message. Through these designs, the route of transmitting can be dynamic adjusted to make the energy consumption between different nodes more reasonable. At last, EALD is compared with other typical routing algorithms in a series of experiments, and the experiments' result proves that EALD has obviously improved the WSNs' energy efficiency. 