201O 2nd International Conference on Education Technology and Computer (ICETC)

Efficient Path Setup and Recovery in Wireless Sensor Networks by using the
Routing Table
Choon-Sung Nam, Hee-Yeon Cho and Dong-Ryeol Shin

School of Information Communication Engineering

Sungkyunkwan University
300 Cheoncheon-dong, Jangan-gu, Suwon, Gyeonggi-do 440-746, Korea
e-mail: {namgun99, perfume772, drshin}@skku.edu

Abstract- Interest for wireless sensor networks has being

increased

in

ubiquitous

networks,

each

node

environment.

sets

up

In

wireless

self-organization

sensor

network,

transfer the sensing data to sink node. Sensor nodes that

compose sensor network are small size, and their battery
capacity is limited. So, each node also imposes a constraint on
search and recovery of data-path. In this paper, we designed a
method to build data-path, considering restrictive features of a
sensor node. Each node uses the routing table which consists of
state information of a node and neighbors, to set up the data

Chapter 2 in the paper discusses subjects to understand

path establishment and event data transmission of related
mechanism. Chapter 3 assumes system model of sensor
network. Chapter 4 suggests efficient path establishment and
recovery using routing table. Chapter 5 shows the
performance evaluation of proposed method, and analyzes
the result. At last, Chapter 6 summarizes the contents of this
paper and suggests the direction of research on the field later
on.

path. Using the routing table, they can efficiently transfer the
sensing data from each node to a sink.

Keywords-wireless sensor networks, routing table, path setup,

path recovery

I.

INTRODUCTION

Wireless sensor networks are composed of devices that

communicate with each other over a wireless medium [1].
Sensor nodes are randomly scattered in particular area,
organize network by itself. In wireless sensor networks,
sensing data is collected from a base station sink node called
sink. The energy of sensor nodes is not exchanged easily
because they are located on area where a person is
unapproachable. So the energy consumption is important to
sensor networks to prolong life time of sensor nodes[2]. Each
sensor node collect the sensing data from own area, sends the
collected data to sink through a wireless link. Ad-hoc
network should be formed in wireless network because the
collected data is sent from a sensor node to a sink by multi
hop. Nodes of Ad-hoc network have no problem about
energy consumption because they can charge a battery. On
the other hand, energy consumption of wireless sensor
networks is important for long activity of sensor nodes
because nodes that compose sensor network are small size,
and battery capacity is limited. So the method to establish
data-path in Ad-hoc network is difficult to be applied to
wireless sensor networks. Presently, many methods to
consider restriction have been proposed [3, 4, 5, 6].
In this paper, we designed a method to build data-path,
considering restrictive features of a sensor node. Each node
uses the routing table which consists of state information of a
node and neighbors, sets up the data-path. Using the routing
table, they can efficiently transfer the sensing data from each
node to a sink.

978-1-4244-6370-11$26.00 2010 IEEE

II.

RELEATED WORK

SPIN[7] is the protocol to transmit the sensing data to

several nodes using three steps of negotiation in order to
prevent a duplication message, duplication sensing, and
improve energy efficiency. Three steps of negotiation consist
of ADV, REQ, and DATA. When a sensor node senses data,
it sends an ADV message to its neighbor nodes. If there is a
node that needs the sensing data among neighbor nodes, the
node creates a REQ message and sends it to a node to send
an ADV message. Then sensing node, which senses data,
sends a DATA message to the node to send a REQ message.
A node that receives a DATA message also sends an ADV
message to its neighbor nodes. If repeating the above process,
the sensing data can be transferred to all nodes. SPIN,
however, may send three messages to all nodes for data
transmission. These messages increase energy consumption
and transmission time to pass data.
DD[8] is the routing technique focusing data based upon
question-broadcasting of sink. it transmits sensing
information after setting up a route reversely from the
targeted region to source nodes via three steps. First, sink
sends the interest message to each node and then each node
creates the gradients for route path of communication.
Second, in case there is node that sense event happened in
the target area, it selects gradients that frequently request
sensing information.
Finally, some gradients whose
communication quality is high are reinforced. Path
establishment of DD is suitable for a request to use same
data-path continuously. On other hand, data-path is not
reinforced in case of using temporal data-path. Accordingly,
DD sends the sensing data through several path before data
path of DD is reinforced.
III.

EFFICIENT PATH SETUP AND RECOVERY

We propose a method to efficiently establish and

recovery data-path, considering energy and data transmission

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2010 2nd International Conference on Education Technology and Computer (ICETC)

of sensor nodes. So the proposed method must satisfy

following criterion
C1) Efficient path establishment for data transmission:
Event data should be transmitted to sink with the number of
minimum messages and hops.
C2) Robustness to data-path failure: It cannot be
prevented that a sensor node fails occasionally. The failure of
data-path, however, should be at least.
A.

Node_ID is C, Node_valid is '1', Hop_cnt is null, and

Node-'pri is null.
B.

Path setup

First, sink send a request message to its neighbors, to

request data and to establish data-path. This process is as
following.

Routing table setup by neighbor nodes

A number of sensor nodes with ID are scattered on the

particular area. Each node sends own state-information to
other nodes for fmding neighbors. Each sensor nodes
through this process set own state information, and accept
information from neighbor nodes and establish routing table.

OR

cO
A

FO

M
,

\:0

Sink

FIg 2-1.

Figure 1.

Figure 2.

NODE STATUS INFORMATION

Node_Status

Node_ID

Node ID

Event_num
Hop_cnt

The number of envent

Hop count between a sink and a node
TABLE II.

NODE ROUTING TABLE

Node_Status

Node_ID
Node_valid

OR

'y'
0\
A

CD

/0
B

Si.Dk

Fig 2-2.

Initial path setup

The process to set up routing table and node state

information is as following. Fig.l-l shows a radius of a
sensor node. And Fig. 1-2 shows sensor nodes that each node
can communicate with. After this process, each node can
figure out own neighbors. For example, node A can
communicate with node B, C, and sink. This means that they
are neighbors of node A.
The field and routing table of node status information are
as following.
TABLE I.

FO

Status that can transmit or relay packets

Hop_cnt

Hop count between a sink and a neighbor node

Node-pri

Node priority that can transmit packets

Like circle 1 of Fig.2-1, if sink sends a request message

to node A and B, they store sink in Node-'pri of routing table.
They can set up data-path toward sink using the value of
Node-'pri. They set up their Hop_cnt increased '1' from
Hop_cnt of sink which is included in the request message. So
Hop_cnt of node A and B is '1'. In Fig. 2-2 show that node
A and B retransmit the request message to their neighbors.
Like circle 2 of Fig. 2-2, both node A and B discard the
request message because they received it before. If node C
and E sends the request message of sink at once, node D
appoints Node-'pri as the node of the request message that
fist arrive on node D. This means that node D selects priority
node to send data among neighbors. This process is
continued until there is the node that has data to meet in the
request message. If node G is an event node that satisfies the
request message, the event message of node G is sent to data
path, G-H-E-B-Sink. This method satisfies the Cl since each
node knows a node to send the event data.
C.

Neighbor node ID

If a sensor node has any neIghbors, It stores mformatIon

to a routing table according to each field. Node A should
store information of node B, node C, and sink to own routing
table. When node A store information of node C, the value of

Path setup by a request message

Path Recovery

Although data-path is established, data-path may be reset

by restriction or request of nodes. In Fig. 3-1, if node H want
to change data-path, it sends the change-path message to
node G. Node G to receive it sets the value of Node_valid by
'0' and the value of Node-'pri by node D, which is second
priority. Data-path toward node H is disconnected and node
G selects node D as new data-path. Then, new data-path is
established, G-D-C-A-Sink.

V4-157

2010 2nd International Conference on Education Technology and Computer (ICETC)

request message to sensor nodes in the network. Total of this

message to establish data-path (PEs) is formula (1).
F

PEs =
c

Sink

;=0

Sink

Fig 3-1.

Fig 3-2.

Figure 3.

L Node_Cnbr

A relay node changing

If a node can't send the change-path message to up-node

because of node failure, each node should recovery data-path.
We assume that each node can listen to the transmission
message of neighbor nodes. So they know the reply to a
request message. If a node doesn't receive any replies from
neighbor nodes or path-node, which is a node in the path, it
judges that an upstream node is failure. A node that
discovers failure of an upstream node fIrst searches for nodes
to be able to send the event data in the routing table. If there
is a node that is higher than its Hop_cnt and is valid '1'
among its routing table, it sends the request message again.
The node that received the request message compares energy
and priority between nodes to send the request message and
selects a node to send event data. Then data-path is reset. Fig.
4 shows a progress of resetting data path.
After sink node sends the request message, if it doesn't
receive event data from event node in TTL, it can retransmit
the request message to event node until TTL threshold. If
sink node doesn't receive event data in TTL threshold, it
judges that data-path was disconnected. Sink node
retransmits the request message to reset data-path. This
method satisfIes C2 in above processes.

(1)

If a sensor node want to change data-path or is failure,

data-path should be reset. RNode_i , a sensor node to need to
recovery data-path, re-sends the request message to neighbor
nodes for resetting data-path. Total of this message to
recovery data-path (PRe) is formula (2). p is probability of
node failure. t is constant for sink node to reset data-path.
if5,p<t,p=O
else p= 1

(2)
We assume that simulation area is 50m x 50m, 60m x
60m, ... , 100m x 100m square containing nodes with
uniform distribution. Transmission range of the nodes is 10m.
Each node contains a list of neighbor nodes. Some events are
fIred randomly in the network. Each node contains ID and
routing table containing the information of the neighbor
nodes.
,-------,
300

'0

j!

250
200

.!
: :;

150

100

---

.... t::

SO

-$- Proposed
:.:

---

SxS

6x6

7x7

BxS

9x9

SPIN

--- OD

IOxlO

The nodes distributton of in Grtd envrionment

Figure 5.

The average number of request messages

70
c

60

.. I

50

.!

40

.a

Figure 4.

Node failure

-----.

30
20

---b"--- DO

10

SxS

IV.

6x6

7x7

8x8

9x9

10xl0

The nodes distribution in envrionment of Gdd

PERFORMANCE EVALUATION

Energy of a sensor node is consumed much to transmit a

message than to compute data. So energy consumption of a
sensor node is proportional with the number of the message
that a sensor node transmit. In this Chapter, we compared the
number of the request message that is used for path
establishment and recovery.
The proposed method should create and use the routing
table for establishing data-path. Each node should get the
information of neighbor nodes from neighbor nodes
(Node_tnbr). For setting data-path, a sink node sends the
V4-158

Pro_method

---*C--SPIN

Figure 6.

The averae number of enven data

20i 0 2nd international Conference on Education Technology and Computer (ICETC)

60
50

.i

40
30

[8]

BO
70

ew
8

20
10

<r-.------.-.------o_--.---"-SxS

6x6

7x7

8x8

..

" '

'0" '" Pro_method

A DD

--.---

__o----.----

9x9

lOdO

Error ratto of sensor nodes in 10xla

Figure 7.

The average number of request message for recovery path

In Fig. 6, the number of the request message of proposed

method is created much than SPIN and DD. The greater
square's size is, the more request messages are. In Fig.7,
event data of the proposed method is transmitted along only
data-path. Other methods' event data, however, SPIN and
DD, are transmitted along several of path until reinforcement
is formed. So they create many duplicate event data. In Fig.8,
SPIN without data recovery mechanism does not compare

the others. In case of local recovery (Op<t), the proposed

method can create less request message to recovery data-path
as only a failure node or its neighbor node resets data-path.
V.

CONCLUSION AND FUGURE WORK

We proposed a method to efficiently establish and

recovery data-path using routing table and considering
energy and data transmission of sensor nodes. Our approach
satisfied two criteria : C1) efficient path establishment for
data transmission and C2 ) robustness to data-path failure.
The proposed method described work locally with the
information of routing table. The result was that the request
message of the proposed method was less than the others :
DD and SPIN. We expect to utilize multi hop routing
technique of wireless sensor networks to enhance the quality
of the routing.
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