SFRP: A selective flooding-based routing protocol for clustered wireless sensor networks

Energy efficient routing in sensor networks has been of great interest in the research community. Cluster-based data collection using aggregation and routing is an effective way of improving energy efficiency in sensor networks. However most cluster-based routing protocols assume a CH-to-CH form of multi hop communications. This assumption may not be valid in typical application scenarios due to battery power and transmission range constraints, hence requiring some sort of gateway mechanisms between cluster heads. Incorporating and modifying the underlying concept of flooding in a clustered network implemented in CBRP, we propose a selective flooding-based routing protocol (SFRP) for multi hop routing; SFRP is specifically targeted at environmental monitoring applications, where sensor nodes typically form a spanning-tree structure rooted at a single sink node. Simulations show that the protocol has reduced control overhead thereby saving energy in the route formation phase.