A Transferring Protocol using Local Information on Ad Hoc Sensor Network and Its Behaviors

Abstract

To communicate over an ad hoc sensor network, many routing protocols usually collect information from the whole of the network. Thus, for transmitting a message, they consume an amount of power that is proportional to the size of the network.

Now, we restrict the problem so that messages can be transferred only in a certain direction on a two-dimensional surface. If we solve this problem by employing a protocol using only local information, the protocol would consume an amount of power that is proportional to not the size of the network, but the length of the transmission path since only the nodes near the path would consume power.

Inspired by the glider of the Game of Life cellular automaton, we propose a protocol designed to obtain information on the shape and the direction of movement of each group of nodes by using only local information. Our protocol has limited straightness for a random distribution of arrangements of nodes.