Information flow based routing algorithms for wireless sensor networks

This paper introduces a measure of information as a new criteria for the performance analysis of routing algorithms in wireless sensor networks. We argue that since the objective of a sensor network is to estimate a two dimensional random field, a routing algorithm must maximize information flow about the underlying field over the life time of the sensor network. We develop two novel algorithms, MIR (Maximum Information Routing) and CMIR (Conditional Maximum Information Routing) designed to maximize information flow, and present a comparison of the algorithms to a previously proposed algorithm - MREP (Maximum Residual Energy Path) through simulations. We show that the proposed algorithms give significant improvement in terms of information flow, when compared to MREP.