GROUP: a Grid-clustering Routing Protocol for Wireless Sensor
Networks∗
Liyang Yu, Neng Wang, Wei Zhang
Dept. of Computer Science & Technology
East China Normal University
Shanghai, 200062, China
{lyyu, nwang, wzhang}@cs.ecnu.edu.cn
Abstract∗
In this paper, we propose GROUP, a grid-clustering
routing protocol that provides scalable and efficient packet
routing for large-scale wireless sensor networks. The sink
proactively, dynamically and randomly builds a cluster grid
structure in GROUP. Only small part of all sensor nods will
participate in election of cluster heads. GROUP can
distribute the energy load among the sensors in the network,
and provide in-network processing support to reduce the
amount of information that must be transmitted to the sink.
We have evaluated the performance of GROUP through
simulation experiments. The results of simulations show that
GROUP is an energy-efficient and scalable routing protocol
for large-scale wireless sensor networks.
Keywords: wireless sensor networks, routing protocol, grid-
clustering
1. Introduction
The wireless sensor network (WSN), which has a variety
of potential applications, is an attractive research area in the
past few years. Such a network usually consists of a large
number of inexpensive, tiny, and low power sensor nodes
that organize themselves into a multi-hop wireless network.
These sensor nodes typically are left unattended (e.g. in
hostile environments) and powered by batteries. It is difficult
and impossible to recharge or replace their batteries.
Energy efficiency is one of core challenges in wireless
sensor networks because energy is scarce and valuable. In
order to minimize energy expenditure and maximize network
lifetime, numerous energy-aware protocols and algorithms
for wireless sensor networks (e.g. S-MAC [8], SPIN [5])
have been proposed by researchers.
The study [6] shows that energy consumption is
dominated by communications for wireless sensor networks.
And communications are dominated by sending and
∗
This work is supported in part by Shanghai Municipal Science and
Technology Commission under Grants No. 05dz15004 (Research
on key technologies of wireless sensor networks and application in
road traffic).
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Chunlei Zheng
Shanghai Institute of
Microsystem and Informantion Technology
Shanghai, 200050, China
zorient@gmail.com
receiving data packets and control packets (e.g. the routing
message). An energy-efficient routing protocol can reduce
control packets and support in-network data processing
which can reduce data packets greatly and only transmit
processed and necessary data instead of all raw data to the
sink. A lot of routing protocols [3][4][7][9] for wireless
sensor networks have been proposed by researchers in past
few years. Due to wireless sensor networking is an
application-specific technology; the existent routing
protocols for wireless sensor networks can not meet the
requirements of all applications of WSNs. We are attempting
to design an energy-efficient routing protocol for the
application scenario like as real-time forest fire detection [10].
In this paper, we focus on the design of GROUP which is
an energy-efficient and cluster-based routing protocol for
wireless sensor networks. In GROUP, one of sinks
proactively, dynamically and randomly builds a cluster grid
to forward query messages and data packets. In order to
detect the forest fire, a large number of sensor nodes, which
can measure environment temperature, relative humidity and
smoke, are densely deployed in the forest. With GROUP,
these nodes can be dynamically organized into clusters so
that each node has a corresponding cluster head at certain
time. Sensor nodes also can receive query messages from
sinks and forward data packets to sinks through GROUP.
We choose grid structure for cluster heads based on
following two considerations. First, grid structure can
guarantee good cluster head distribution. Second, the routing
between cluster heads is simple in grid structure. And cluster
heads can select one route from multiple candidate routes to
forward data packet to sinks based on residual energy and
load balance.
The remainder of this paper is organized as follows.
Section 2 describes the design of GROUP. The simulation
results will be shown in Section 3. In Section 4, we discuss
related issues. Finally, Section 5 concludes this paper.
2. Grid-clustering routing protocol
There are several network models for wireless sensor
networks. In this work, the network model is based on the
following assumptions:
 y All sensor nodes are stationary and ware of their own
locations through location techniques such as the
recursive position estimation [2].
y The number of sinks may vary over time. All sinks can
communicate with each other through tethered network
or satellite.
y Each sensor node is able to adjust its wireless
transceiver’s power consumption. The cluster heads
communication with each other through long-range
radios while other sensor nodes communication with
respective cluster head through short-range radios.
In GROUP, all sensor nodes are divided into several
clusters dynamically. One node is selected as the cluster
head (CH) in each cluster. And all cluster heads form a
virtual cluster grid. The data queries will be transmitted from
sinks to all nodes via cluster heads. And the data matched the
query are routed back to sinks via cluster heads too. The
application-specific data aggregation policy can be applied in
cluster heads.
We begin to describe GROUP from how to select cluster
heads dynamically, i.e. the cluster grid construction process.
2.1. Cluster grid construction
After the wireless sensor network is deployed, all sinks in
the network will elect one sink as the primary sink (PS), who
initiates the cluster grid construction process, based on their
location. The PS is closer to the center of network than other
sinks in order to keep a minimum duration of grid
construction. For example, in Fig. 1, sink S2 is the PS. If
sinks are mobile, the PS will vary with the sinks’ mobility.
Every T seconds, PS initiates the cluster grid construction
process by broadcasting a GS-election command within its
radio coverage range. The aim of GS-election command is to
elect one sensor node as the Grid Seed (GS) from PS’s
neighbors. In the GS-election command, there are three
important parameters, i.e. PS’s location LPS = (xPS, yPS), cell
size R and probability p. All the sensor nodes who received
the GS-election command will decide whether to answer the
PS or not based on these parameters. Let node N’s location
LN = (xN, yN), if |xPS − xN | > R/2 or |yPS − yN | > R/2 node N
will not answer the PS. Otherwise, node N will answer the
PS by sending a GS-reply packets to it with a probability p.
And we name the node N as the candidate of GS.
When the PS sent out the GS-election command, it started
a timer. If the PS didn’t receive any reply from its neighbors
before the timer expires, it will resend the GS-election with a
bigger probability p.
The PS will select one node as the new GS from all
candidate nodes based on candidates’ residual energy. The
candidate who has more residual energy than other
candidates becomes the new GS. If there are two or more
candidates who have same residual energy and have more
residual energy than other candidates, the one whose reply
packet arrived at PS earlier will be selected as the new GS. If
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S1
R S2
GS
R
Figure 1. Example cluster grid
the new GS is the same as the current GS, this run of cluster
grid construction process will be terminated. Otherwise, the
PS will ask the new GS to select more cluster heads around
the network.
The GS is at one crossing point of the constructing cluster
grid. Let GS’s location LGS = (xGS, yGS), crossing points are
located at Lp = (xi, yj), where x = xGS +R×i and yj = yGS+R×j
(i, j = 0, ±1, ±2, ±3, …). For every crossing point, GROUP
will select one sensor node, which is closer to the crossing
point than other nodes, as the cluster head.
The new GS broadcasts a CH-election packet, containing
LGS and cell size R, to its neighbors to elect its four
downstream cluster heads. All sensor nodes will store the
latest CH-election packet for failure recovery (discussed in
section 2.4). The neighbors, who received the CH-election
packet, calculate the distance to the four crossing points
based on LGS and cell size R. If the distance to one of the four
crossing points is less than 0.5R, the node will compete with
its neighbors for becoming a cluster head by broadcasting a
CH-candidate packet to its near neighbors after an interval.
In order to reduce the number of CH-candidate packet, the
interval is in proportion to the distance to the crossing point.
So the node has smallest distance will usually send out the
CH-candidate packet firstly. If a node who received the CH-
candidate packet has smaller distance to the crossing point, it
will broadcast a new CH-candidate packet. Otherwise, it will
keep silent on election of cluster head. Finally, the node who
broadcasts the last CH-candidate packet becomes a new
cluster head.
The new cluster head sends a CH-new packet to the GS
and stores the GS’s information in its cache as its upstream
cluster head. Then the new cluster head broadcasts a CH-
election packet to elect its downstream cluster heads like the
GS does. The election of cluster head will be iterated until all
cluster heads are elected. And during the election, duplicate
CH-election packets identified by the sequence number will
be simply dropped.
When a node received a CH-election packet from the GS
or a cluster head, it also calculates the distance to the node
which transmitted the CH-election packet. If the distance is
less than 0.7R, the node will store the information of the
sender and become the member of this cluster.

Data Forwarding
2.5
Energy Consumption (Joule)
1.5
S 10
N3
GS 1
N1 N2 GS0
N0 0.5
Figure 2. Data forwarding during Figure 3. Energy consumption with
cluster grid construction
2.2. Query forwarding
In the application scenario of forest fire detection, there
are two typical classes of queries sent by sinks, i.e. location-
unaware query and location-aware query. In GROUP, they
are forwarded through limited-broadcast and unicast
respectively.
The location-unaware query, e.g. which area(s) has
temperature higher than 40°C, is transmitted from one of the
sink to its closest cluster head firstly. The cluster head then
broadcasts the query through long-range radio. While its four
neighbor cluster heads will re-broadcast the query, the
member node will not re-broadcast the query.
The location-aware query, e.g. what is highest
temperature in area (0, 0, 200, 150), will be forwarded via
the cluster heads by unicast. When a cluster head receives a
location-aware query, it will forward the query to one of its
downstream cluster heads which is closest to the destination
area mentioned in the query. And only the cluster head, who
locates in the area, will broadcast the location-aware query to
its member through short-range radio.
2.3. Data forwarding
Once a sensor node receives the query from its cluster
head, it will check the query and collected data. If the
collected data match the query, it sends out data to its cluster
head through short-range radio. The data packet will be
forwarded recursively by the cluster head to its upstream
cluster head till it reaches the sink which generated the query.
In GROUP, cluster heads can perform data aggregation
expediently in order to reduce the number of data packets
and save energy.
Fig. 2 illustrates the data forwarding during cluster grid
construction. The network is transferring to a new cluster
grid whose grid seed is GS1. When the data packet from node
N0 reaches node N2 via node N1 according to the previous
cluster grid, node N2 will transmit it to node N3 instead of
node GS0. Because node N3 informed its neighbor that it
became a cluster head of the new cluster grid during the
cluster grid construction. Then the data packet will
transmitted to sink S via GS1. So cluster grid construction
doesn’t impact the data forwarding.
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Average end-to-end delay of data
20
Maximum
2 Average 15
Minmum
packet (ms)
1
5
0 0
120 160 200 240 280 320 120 160 200 240 280 320
Cell Size (m) Cell Size (m)
Figure 4. Average end-to-end delay of
different cell sizes data packet with different cell sizes
2.4. Failure recovery
In wireless sensor networks, the sensor node is prone to
failure. It is important and necessary to handle unexpected
component failures for robustness. Only the failure of cluster
head will impact the query forwarding and data forwarding
in GROUP.
When a cluster head failed, the sensor node, which tries to
transmit query or data to it, broadcasts a CH-search packet to
elect a new cluster head to replace the failed cluster head.
The neighbors of failed cluster head will elect a new cluster
head based on the CH-search packet and latest CH-election
packet like the election of cluster head during cluster grid
construction. Then the new cluster head finds out its
upstream cluster head and downstream cluster head(s) by
broadcasting a CH-recovery packet.
3. Performance evaluation
We implemented GROUP in ns-2.27[10] and the
underlying MAC is 802.11 DCF. In this section, we first
evaluate how the control parameters affect the performance
of GROUP. Then we compare GROUP with LEACH. We
choose three metrics to analyze the performance of GROUP
to compare other scheme:
y Energy consumption is defined as the communication
(transmitting and receiving) energy the network
consumes; the idle energy is not counted.
y Packet delivery fraction is the ratio of the data packets
delivered to the sinks to those generated by the sources.
y Average end-to-end delay of data packet includes all
possible delays caused by queuing at the interface
queue, retransmission delays at the MAC, and
propagation and transfer times.
Each simulation run lasts 200 seconds, and each result is
averaged over three random network topologies. Every 2
seconds, 20 nodes are selected randomly to send the sink a
64-byte data packet. Sensor nodes adjust their wireless
transceiver’s energy consumption according to the cell size.
3.1. Impact of parameters on GROUP
To evaluate the impact of control parameters (i.e. cell size
and interval of cluster grid construction) on GROUP, one
sink and 300 sensor nodes are randomly distributed in a
 Average end-to-end delay of data
2 14 1
Energy Consumption (Joule)

Packet delivery fraction(%)

1.5 13.5 0.8

packet (ms)
Maximum 13 0.6
1 Average
Minmum 12.5 0.4
0.5
12 0.2

0 11.5 0
5 10 20 30 40 50 5 10 20 30 40 50 5 10 20 30 40 50
Interval of cluster grid construction (s) Interval of cluster grid construction (s) Interv al of cluster grid construction (s)

Figure 5. Energy consumption with Figure 6. Average end-to-end delay
different intervals of grid construction of data packet with different intervals
1200×1000m2 field. The sink locates at the center of the
field.
Firstly, we study the impact of cell size on GROUP’s
performance. The cell size varies from 120m, 160m, 200m,
240m, 280m to 320m. The interval of cluster grid
construction is set to 10s. Fig. 3 shows the average,
maximum and minimum energy consumption with different
cell sizes. And Fig. 4 plots the average end-to-end delay of
data packet. We make two observations. First, the energy
consumption increases significantly as the cell size increases
because larger cell size means cluster head consume more
power for communications. Second, the data packet delay
tends to decrease when there are larger cell size, because
larger cell size means less average hops from sensor nodes to
the sink. Therefore, cell size should balance the energy
consumption and the end-to-end delay of data packet.
We also evaluate the impact of interval of cluster grid
construction. We vary the interval from 5s, 10s, 20s, 30s,
40s, to 50s, while the cell size is set to 200m. Fig. 5 shows
that the average energy consumption decreases slightly when
the interval of grid construction increases. It implies that
cluster grid construction is energy-efficient. In 40-second
interval and 50-second interval cases, the maximum energy
consumption is much more than other case’s maximum
energy consumption because longer interval requires the
cluster heads are on duty longer and forward more data
packets. Therefore, long interval should not be chosen in
GROUP. When the interval increases, average end-to-end
delay of data packet decreases (Fig. 6). This is due to the
data packet usually will pass through one more cluster head
during grid construction (Section 2.3). So the less grid
construction means the less average end-to-end delay of data
packet. Fig. 7 plots the packet delivery fraction with different gap between maximum and average energy consumption can
intervals of cluster grid construction. There is no significant
difference on packet delivery fraction with different
intervals. And it implies that the cluster grid construction
doesn’t impact the packet delivery fraction.
3.2. Comparison with LEACH
In this section, we compare GROUP with LEACH in 6
scenarios with different number of sensor nodes and different
size of network field:
y 75 sensor nodes in a 600×500m2 field
Figure 7. Packet delivery fraction
with different intervals
y 108 sensor nodes in a 720×600m2 field
y 147 sensor nodes in a 840×700m2 field
y 192 sensor nodes in a 960×800m2 field
y 243 sensor nodes in a 1080×900m2 field
y 300 sensor nodes in a 1200×1000m2 field.
All scenarios have the same distributing density of sensor
nodes. And all scenarios have one sink that locates at the
center of the field.
In GROUP, cell size is set to 200m; interval of cluster
grid construction is set to 20s. In LEACH, the ratio of
number of clusters to number of nodes is set to 5%; interval
of cluster head selection round is same as GROUP, i.e. 20s.
There is no aggregation operation applied both in GROUP
and in LEACH because the focus of this paper is not to study
the performance of aggregation.
Firstly, we look at packet delivery fraction, shown in Fig.
8. GROUP has clearly better packet delivery fraction than
LEACH, especially in the scenarios with more sensor nodes.
We find lots of collision reports in simulation log files of
LEACH. More collisions are reported in bigger scenario
field. In LEACH, all cluster head forward the data packet
from cluster members to the sink directly. In bigger scenario
field, longer radio, which leads more collision, is used to
transmit the data from cluster heads to the sink in LEACH.
But in GROUP, the cluster head will forward the data packet
to the upstream cluster head that is closer to the sink, and the
radio range only varies with cell size.
Secondly, we evaluate the energy consumption. Fig. 9
shows the maximum energy consumption and average
energy consumption of all sensor nodes in GROUP and
LEACH. The maximum energy consumption is an important
metric to show when the first dead node appears. And the
reflect the distribution of energy consumption of all sensor
nodes. GROUP has lower maximum energy consumption
than LEACH but the case with 75 sensor nodes. For more
sensor nodes, LEACH has much more maximum energy
consumption than GROUP. In all cases, GROUP has smaller
gap between maximum and average energy consumption
than LEACH. That means GROUP has better energy
consumption distribution than LEACH. For more sensor
nodes, LEACH has worse energy consumption distribution.
Finally, we study the average end-to-end delay of data
packet. In all cases, LEACH demonstrates significantly

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 Average end-to-end delay of data
1 7 14

Energy Consumption (Joule)

Packet delivery fraction(%)

Max w ith GROUP

6 Av g w ith GROUP 12
0.9
5 Max w ith LEACH 10

packet (ms)
0.8 Av g w ith LEACH
4 8 GROUP
0.7 3 6 LEACH
GROUP
2 4
0.6 LEACH
1 2
0.5 0 0
75 108 147 192 243 300 75 108 147 192 243 300 75 108 147 192 243 300
The number of sensor nodes The number of sensor nodes The number of sensor nodes

Figure 8. Packet delivery fraction

Figure 9. Energy consumption using Figure 10. Average end-to-end delay of
using GROUP vs. LEACH GROUP vs. LEACH data packet using GROUP vs. LEACH
lower average delay than GROUP (Fig. 10). This is due to form a virtual grid. Our simulations have confirmed that
GROUP is a multi-hop clustering routing protocol, while GROUP is an effective, scalable and energy-efficient routing
LEACH is a single-hop clustering routing protocol. And protocol for large-scale wireless sensor networks.
GROUP has lower average delay with less sensor nodes.
In summary, GROUP is a more scalable clustering 6. Acknowledgment
routing protocol than LEACH. With more sensor nodes,
GROUP has significantly better performance than LEACH. We would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their
constructive criticisms.
4. Related works
7. References
There are many routing protocols that attempt to build
virtual hierarchy in wireless sensor networks. [1] http://www.isi.edu/nsnam/ns/, ns-2 Network Simulator.
GROUP is inspired partly by TTDD[7]. They both build [2] J. Albowitz, A. Chen, and L. Zhang, “Recursive Position
grid structure for routing in wireless sensor network. TTDD Estimation in Sensor Networks,” ICNP'01, 2001, pp. 35-41.
builds one grid structure for every source based on the source [3] W. Heinzelman, A. Chandrakasan, and H. Balakrishnan, “An
while GROUP builds only one cluster grid structure based on Application-Specific Protocol Architecture for Wireless
one of sinks in whole network. And the dissemination nodes Microsensor Networks,” IEEE Transactions on Wireless
couldn’t communication with each other directly in TTDD. Communications, 2002, 1(4), pp. 660-670.
The data packet should be forwarded via other nodes from one [4] C. Intanagonwiwat, R. Govindan, and D. Estrin, “Directed
dissemination point to its upstream or downstream dissemination diffusion: A scalable and robust communication paradigm for
point. sensor networks,” in Proceedings of the ACM/IEEE
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Networking, Boston, MA, USA, Aug. 2000, pp. 56–67.
protocol that use clustering to prolong the lifetime of
[5] J. Kulik, W. Heinzelman, and H. Balakrishnan, “Negotiation-
network. Its clustering terminates in a constant number of based protocols for disseminating information in wireless
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distribution. LEACH also proposes to use CDMA spreading 185, 2002.
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simulation results also show that the performance of LEACH sensors,” Communications of the ACM, 43(5):51-58, May 2000.
is not good in large-scale wireless sensor network. [7] F. Ye, H. Luo, J. Cheng, S. Lu, and L. Zhang, “A Two-tier
HEED[9] periodically selects cluster heads according to a Data Dissemination Model for Large-scale Wireless Sensor
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5. Conclusion 640.
[10] L. Yu, N. Wang, and X. Meng, “Real-time Forest Fire
In this paper, we described GROUP, a grid-clustering Detection with Wireless Sensor Networks,” in Proceedings of
routing protocol for wireless sensor networks. Query and IEEE International Conference on Wireless Communications,
data packet can be forwarded via the cluster heads which are Networking and Mobile Computing, Wuhan, China, Sep. 2005,
selected dynamically by one of sinks. And all cluster heads Vol. 2, pp. 1214-1217.

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