Sensor Data Geographic Forwarding in Two-Dimensional and Three-Dimensional Spaces

Abstract

A wireless sensor network is a collection of sensor nodes that have the ability to sense phenomena in a given environment and collect data, perform computation on the gathered data, and transmit (or forward) it to their destination. Unfortunately, these sensor nodes have limited power, computational, and storage capabilities. These factors have an influence on the design of wireless sensor networks and make it more challenging. In order to overcome these limitations, various power management techniques and energy-efficient protocols have been designed. Among such techniques and protocols, geographic routing is one of the most efficient ways to solve some of the design issues. Geographic routing in wireless sensor networks uses location information of the sensor nodes to define a path from source to destination without having to build a network topology. In this paper, we present a survey of the existing geographic routing techniques both in two-dimensional (2D) and three-dimensional (3D) spaces. Furthermore, we will study the advantages of each routing technique and provide a discussion based on their practical possibility of deployment.