A Data Dissemination Algorithm Based on Geographical Quorum System in Wireless Sensor Networks

A quorum system is formed by organizing nodes into subsets called quorums, where every two quorums intersect and no quorum includes another quorum. The quorum system reduces the access cost per operation, to balance the load, and to improve the system scalability. All of these properties make quorum systems particularly attractive for large-scale sensor applications involving data gathering and diffusion tasks. The task of data dissemination with a quorum system is the same as doing a match-making between quorums. But those pseudo quorum systems designed for wired networks fail to address the challenges introduced by sensor networks. In this paper, a novel data dissemination scheme (MM-GSQ) built on top of a new quorum system in wireless sensor network is proposed. The MM-GSQ uses a new quorum system named Spatial Neighbor Proxy Quorum (SNPQ) which is evolved from the pseudo quorum but much smaller. The SNPQ utilizes the geometric properties of the planar graph, e.g., GG or RNG graph, and reduces the quorum access cost greatly as opposed to the traditional pseudo quorum. The MM-GSQ improves energy consumption by reducing message transmissions and collisions, increases the match-making success rate and is easy to be implemented. Theoretical analyses and experimental results indicate that the new quorum system (SNPQ) with related data dissemination algorithm (MM-GSQ) has higher scalability, energy efficiency and match-making success rate than those of the original means. It is especially suitable for data dissemination in large-scale wireless sensor networks (WSNs).