Abstract: A scalable, minimum node complexity, energy efficient, and error-resilient routing method for wireless sensor networks is described. The network is partitioned into regions by power controlled base station scans using a directional antenna. Routing is performed using only local location information and instructions received from the base station at each sensor node with minimum processing and control overhead, thus allowing simple, low-cost sensor designs. Sensors in the network provide to a base station reports of the condition of the sensors themselves, and these reports are analyzed by the base station to determine improved routing instructions, which are then provided to the sensor nodes in control messages. Each data packet is relayed in an interleaved, loop-free mesh of sectors toward the base station, making data delivery robust to sensor failures and transmission errors.

Abstract: A packet network employs flow control providing assigned rates to sessions in accordance with a general max-min (GMM) rate allocation. The GMM rate allocation accounts for the minimum cell rate and peak cell rate requirements for each session. For one case, a centralized flow control algorithm is employed that sorts sessions based on increasing minimum cell rate. The centralized flow control algorithm employs an iterative process of increasing the rate of the smallest rate session and adding sessions to the process when the smallest rate session equals the next higher rate session. The rates are increased until the rate either reaches the peak cell rate of the session or the link saturates. For a second case, a distributed flow control algorithm is employed with a distributed protocol within the network to allocate capacity of network links to sessions. For the distributed flow control algorithm, an iterative process of rate allocation uses a modified version of the Consistent Marking method.