2008 International Conference on Computational Intelligence and Security
An Efficient Gradient Mechanism of Directed Diffusion in
Wireless Sensor Network
Jian Wan, Jianrong Wu, Xianghua Xu, Yanna Yan
Grid and Services Computing Lab, S. of Computer Science, Hangzhou Dianzi
University, Hangzhou, China
E-mail: wanjian@hdu.edu.cn, wujianlong111@163.com, xianghuaxu@yahoo.com.cn,
yyanna314@gmail.com
Abstract
In Wireless Sensor Network (WSN), sensor node is
limited in energy, thus energy efficiency is an
important concern in routing protocol design. And
some applications in sensor networks have the
requirement of timely delivery, real-time also become
needed for routing. Directed Diffusion (DD) is a data
centric dissemination protocol for sensor networks,
but DD cannot support time-sensitive traffic nor
perform balance of energy consumption to increase
network lifetime. To solve this issue, we design a new
kind of gradient mechanism, which considers residual
energy of node and the number of hops from the sink
to an intermediate node synchronously. It can find a
best-effort optimal path in sensor networks for data
transfer. Simulation results show that our proposed
method achieves more globally energy balancing and
lower delay for data transfer than originally DD. It
prolongs the lifetime of network efficiently.
1 Introduction
Recently, Wireless sensor network (WSN) has
become increasingly popular, due to its wide range of
applications in civil and military areas such as
environment monitoring, traffic surveillance, military
sensing, building monitoring and so on. Sensor
networks have a large number of nodes which may be
deployed on inaccessible area or harsh environment.
They are required to accurately collect and
disseminate information about a monitoring area. The
sensor nodes share and process their observations so
that useful information is available at a command
center (sink), users can retrieve information from the
sink node to monitor and control the whole network
environment [1].
Some protocols have been proposed for QoS
routing in wireless ad-hoc networks considering the
dynamic nature of the network [2, 3], but they are not
suitable for WSN which have limited resources. For
wireless sensor networks’ routing, balance of energy
consumption is critical to increase network lifetime.
*This work is supported by the National Natural Science
Foundation of China (Grant No.60873023), Science and
Technology Research and Development Program of Zhejiang
Province, China. (Grant No. 2007C11023, 2007C21G3230005 and
2007R40G2040097)
978-0-7695-3508-1/08 $25.00 © 2008 IEEE
DOI 10.1109/CIS.2008.133
However, optimal routing can cause an imbalance on
the load of individual nodes. Optimal routes are
always used while longer routes are underutilized,
thus network may also get partitioned. LEACH [4]
which is a clustering-based protocol that utilizes
randomized rotation of local cluster-head to evenly
distribute the energy load among the nodes in the
network. Many applications in WSN have the
requirement of timely data delivery [5].
In designing a metric to take into account energy
balance and real-time for WSN, the key challenge
here is to find an effective way to combine them so
that we can compute the cost of each route and find a
path with the minimum cost that satisfy our goals.
In this paper, we propose a gradient mode which
based on one-phase Directed Diffusion (DD) [6]. It is
designed to achieve balance of energy consumption
and real-time traffic. The main contributions of this
paper are:
i) We design a new gradient model which considers
residual energy of node, to best-effort evenly
distribute the energy load among all the nodes in
the network.
ii) We design a new gradient model which considers
the number of hops from the sink to an
intermediate node, to best-effort choose a shorter
path.
iii) We show the performance of gradient scheme for
the increase of total number of nodes in the
network.
The rest of this paper is organized as follows.
Section 2 discusses related work of routing protocol of
WSN. Section 3 gives a detailed description of the
proposed mechanism. In section 4, we provide
theoretical and simulation results in evaluating the
proposed mechanism. Finally, in section 5, we
presents the paper concludes.
2 Related work
In this section, we summarize the related works in
the area of routing protocol of WSN. C.
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Intanagonwiwat et. al. [6] proposed Directed
Diffusion, which is a data-centric routing protocol for
WSN. In DD, the publish/subscribe mechanism
provides an application’s view to a sensor network.
Data is named by attribute-value pairs. Sink
disseminates an interest to find sources, at this time
gradients are set up at the nodes which received the
interest. Then, sources send exploratory messages to
reply to sink. Sink sends reinforcement messages to
select path.
In order to match the different application
requirements, F. Silva et. al. [7] extend the original
DD to a DD protocol family, which includes: (1) two-
phase pull diffusion, (2) one-phase pull diffusion, (3)
push diffusion. In this paper, we use the one-phase
pull diffusion algorithm, due to the shortest delay in it.
In [8], the authors propose a Gradient-Based
Routing (GBR), which is based on DD. The idea is to
record the number of hops when interest message is
flooded. It allows a node to discover the minimum
number of hops to the sink, which is called the node’s
height. The difference between a node’s height and
that of its neighbor is considered the gradient on that
link. A packet is forwarded on a link with the largest
gradient. In addition, the data spreading scheme in [8]
strives to achieve even distribution of the energy load
among the nodes in the network, which can balance
the energy consumption and increase the network
lifetime.
Considering the balance of energy consumption in
sensor network, multi-path routing scheme [9] and
poll-reply scheme in collecting sensor data and
passive clustering protocol [10] may suitable for
WSN. In multi-path routing scheme [9], sensor nodes
have multiple paths to forward their data. Multi-path
routing has the advantage on sharing energy depletion
between all sensor nodes and preventing early death of
heavily involved nodes. The balance among multiple
paths based on the energy usage at neighbors is
considered in the selection of the path. The poll-reply
scheme shows uneven distribution of energy
consumption among nodes especially those close to
base station. Thus, passive clustering is introduced in
the energy aware polling model.
At last, in [11], the authors present a real-time
communication protocol for sensor network, which is
named SPEED. The protocol requires each node to
maintain a neighbor table about its neighbors and uses
geographic forwarding to find the paths. The neighbor
node with highest relay speed has a higher probability
to be chosen as the forwarding node. Further more,
SPEED makes effort to ensure a certain speed for data
transfer in the network, which can estimate the delay
of data transmission to the sink. However, SPEED
does not consider energy efficient in its routing
protocol.
3 Proposed gradient mechanism
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The conventional DD algorithm doesn’t consider
the energy balance to improve routing selection,
which can easily result in energy exhaustion of some
nodes which are located in the critical position. And
some applications in sensor network have the real-
time requirement. In order to solve such issues, we
introduce a new kind of gradient, which combines
energy efficient and hop count of a path.
3.1 Definitions
We design a gradient model based on one-phase
Directed Diffusion. Firstly, we list the notations used
in our algorithm and analysis below:
z e: residual energy of one node;
z h: number of hops from the sink to an
intermediate node;
z θ : threshold value of energy;
z w1 , w2 , λ : a factor which can be set based on
real scene;
z weight of node’s energy, formulated as:
w1 ⋅ log(e - θ +1)
z weight of node’s hop count, formulated as:
w2 ⋅ h
z G: gradient value of node, formulated as:
⎧ w1 ⋅ log(e - θ +1)
⎪ , w1 ≠ 0 and w2 ≠ 0
w2 ⋅ h
⎪
G = ⎨λ ⋅ log(e - θ +1), w1 = 0 (1)
⎪λ
⎪ , w2 = 0
⎩h
We assume node in WSN is aware of its own
energy level, and has a threshold value of energy ( θ ).
When its energy level is close to θ , its gradient will be
close to zero. You can only consider one factor
between energy and hop count, the situation is
described as above ( w1 = 0 or w2 = 0 ).
3.2 Gradient setup
Gradient is an important term in DD. It is designed
to direct the data propagation direction with the
minimum cost. In order to setup gradient values of
each node, sink node will broadcast an interest
message to its neighbors. The initiation interest
message contains a forwarding times (FT) cost of 0
and a residual energy cost of sink's energy level, both
set by the sink. Each node maintains an interest table
that contains which neighbor sends the interest. To
such a neighbor, it creates a gradient, which is
calculated by the equation (1), and that is on the
condition of w1 ≠ 0 and w2 ≠ 0 .
We assume that HC represents the hop count from
current node to the sink through the current neighbor;
MHC represents minimum hop count from current
node to the sink. Both HC and MHC are initially set
as its default value of NULL.
 When the intermediate node receives the interest
messages from its neighbor for the first time, it will
start up a transitory delay, then set HC value and its
MHC value by the FT value plus 1, calculate the
gradient value by the HC and residual energy cost.
During such delay, if current node receives the same
interest from other nodes, it will continue to set up
corresponding gradient and will compare the new HC
value with current MHC value, MHC will be updated
by the smaller one. When this delay is over, current
node uses the MHC value to update the original FT
value and uses its own energy level to update the
original energy cost, and then the updated interest
message will be re-sent to all neighbors of current
node. If this node receives the same interest message
again, it should be discarded. Therefore, no
forwarding loop can form in this phase. This process
continues until all nodes set their gradient and MHC
values accordingly by receiving interest.
Figure 1. Gradient generation: interest message is flooded by sink
and utilized for setting up gradient at each node.
Fig.1 shows an example for gradient generation. In
this topology, node O is the sink and floods an interest
message. Node H is the source. For example, node E
first receives the interest from node A, node E sets HC
value and MHC value to 2, calculates the gradient
value by the HC and residual energy of node A. Then
node E starts up a transitory delay. During the delay,
node E receives the interest from node B and node C,
calculates corresponding gradient respectively. From
comparing, node E concludes its MHC should be 2.
When the delay is over, node E re-sends the interest
message with FT value of 2 and its own energy level
to node G and node H.
3.3 Data dissemination
In this phase, the transmitting path of data message
from source node to sink node has been established.
There may be multi-paths for data transfer, so we
should select a best-effort optimal path based on
gradient value.
When the source node receives the interest, it will
match the data in its cache. If matching, it will
compare the gradient value of neighbors in cache and
send the data message to the neighbor whose gradient
value is the largest. When an intermediate node
receives the data message from its neighbor, it will
match the interest in its cache. If matching, it will
keep a data duplicate in its cache, which is loop
prevention. Then this node will select a neighbor as
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the next hop for data transfer based on the same
gradient rule. If no match exists, the data message is
silently dropped. This process continues until the sink
receives this data message.
Figure 2. Data dissemination: data message follows the largest
gradient derection towards the sink.
Fig.2 shows an example for data dissemination.
Node H has data message that matches the interest. It
will compare the gradient value of its neighbor nodes
E, F and G. We assume these three nodes have the
same energy, thus the MHC value determines the
gradient value. On this situation, node H will select E
as its next hop node for data forwarding, which
ensures it can find a best-effort low delay path for data
transfer.
The energy consumption of node will be increased
with the increase of data transfer. It means that some
nodes’ gradient values will be changed. At the
beginning, the gradient value of node E may larger
than node F and G. But, at the next gradient
generation phase, node E’s energy will decrease due
to the data transfer, which result in the decrease of
gradient value. Therefore, node H will select node F
or G as its next hop. In our algorithm, we assume a
threshold value of energy ( θ ).If node’s energy level is
close to θ , it will not be selected to forwarding data.
But we can adjust the value of θ to meet different
requirement. This scheme can balance the energy
consumption to prolong the lifetime of the network.
Note that there is not only one optimal data transfer
path to sink, but also reserve some other paths as the
candidate paths. Considering Fig.2, node E has three
neighbor nodes (node A, B and C) as its potential next
hop node, but it doesn’t store all its neighbors. At the
beginning, node E may select node A as its next hop.
But, if node A is failing, then node A can select one of
its candidate nodes (node B or C) as its next hop node.
Therefore, reliable data delivery can be achieved.
The proposed procedures for gradient setup and
data dissemination are now summarized in Fig.3 and
Fig.4, respectively.
receive an interest message from its neighbor;
while(delay){ /* node starts up a transitory delay */
HC = FT+1;
node->neighborID->energy = interest->energy;
if(MHC == NULL){
MHC = HC;
}
 else{ Average residual energy percentage of node is
if(HC < MHC){ defined as the ratio of residual energy of all nodes to
MHC = HC; initial energy of all nodes in network.
} Real-time service time is defined as the time taken
calculate gradient value by HC and energy; for the network can supply real-time service only
} when the hop count from the source node to sink node
FT = MHC; doesn’t exceed the max hop count of the acceptable
interest->energy = node->energy; data transfer path, which is named MXP.
re-send this updated interest message;
4.3 Simulation results
Figure 3. Procedure for gradient setup

gradient = 0; /* initialize gradient value*/
for(i = first neighbor in cache; i <= last neighbor in
cache; i++){
neighbor = i;
if(neighbor->gradient > gradient){
gradient = neighbor->gradient;
next_hop = neighbor;
} sending data. Most of energy consumption may be
re-send data to next_hop;
} which will cause the disconnection of the network.
Figure 4. Procedure for data dissenination
4 Performance evaluation
In this section, we evaluate the performance
improvement of our mechanism by comparing the
conventional DD. We use Visual C++ as the tool.
4.1 Simulation model
Our simulation experiment is operated in the same
environment to analyze the performance difference
between the proposed mechanism and original DD.
The simulation results are showed as follows:
Fig.5 shows the network lifetime with different
network scale. From the figure, it can be seen that
the network lifetime of new DD algorithm provides
a longer network lifetime than DD almost by
12.63%. Due to DD only consider the delay when
distributed in a narrow region of the network. Then,
some nodes may die earlier than the other nodes,
In our proposed algorithm, each node in network
chooses the next hop node whose residual energy is
an important factor for data transfer. Therefore, it
can balance the energy consumption for the entire
network, and effectively extend network lifetime.

We use the following model for our simulation

study:
z In our experiments, we study five different
sensor fields, ranging from 50 to 250 nodes in
increments of 50 nodes.
z All these nodes are randomly deployed in a
region of size 200m × 200m, with a fixed
number of 1 sink and 5 sources.
z Sink is at the down left corner of the region, and
sources are at the up right corner of the region.
z Set the transmission range of node as 30 meters. Figure 5. Lifetime of the Networkt
z Total simulation time is 500 seconds.
Fig.6 shows the average residual energy percentage
z Initial node energy is 1000 Joules. of node with time increasing. We use five different
z The interest message propagation interval is network scales to demonstrate certain times
supposed to be 10s. respectively to obtain average results. From the figure,
z The threshold value of energy is 1/50 of the it can be seen that average residual energy in proposed
initial energy. DD is higher than that in the original DD, in the same
4.2 Performance metrics simulation environment. It is because proposed DD
selects the real-time path which has relatively
sufficient energy for data transmission, the energy
We use three metrics to analyze the performance of
consumption is evenly distributed and low delay data
our mechanism: lifetime of network, average residual
transfer is stable. It can improve the network load
energy percentage of node and real-time service time.
balance and save certain energy depletion.
Lifetime of network is defined as the time taken for
the first nodes in network reaches threshold value of
energy.

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Figure 6. Average Residual Energy Percentage of Node
Fig.7 shows the real-time service time with 250
nodes. We define the value of MXP is 13. From the
figure, it can be seen that the path proposed DD
selected is relatively stable by comparing with the
original DD. At first, the path original DD selected is
shorter than proposed DD, but then becomes longer.
That is because original DD only considers the low
delay path for data forwarding, never takes account of
the remaining energy of node, which will result in
some nodes on the shorter path are frequently used to
transfer data, then these nodes must be failed for
energy exhaustion. Afterwards, original DD has to
select the path which is longer than MXP. Our
proposed DD provides a real-time service with
maximum gradient value, which combines time-
sensitive and energy balance. Thus, its real-time
service time is longer than original DD.
Figure 7. Real-time Service Time
5 Conclusion
431
In this paper, we have proposed an efficient
gradient mechanism based on Directed Diffusion,
which considers the remaining energy of node to
achieve the balance of energy consumption in network,
then the probability of each node to be selected to
perform transmission task is increased. It also takes
account of the hop count from sink to an intermediate
node to satisfy some real-time applications. Thus, it
can find a best-effort optimal path in sensor networks.
Simulation results show that the improved gradient
mechanism achieves better energy balance and lower
delay for data transfer than DD in coordinative
conditions. It can help to extend the entire network
lifetime.
In a future work, we plan to extend this gradient
model and examine the performance of such extended
model. For example, we can adjust the weight of
energy or hop count to satisfy different application
requirements.
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