  One of the limitations of wireless sensor nodes is their inherent limited
energy resource. Besides maximizing the lifetime of the sensor node, it is
preferable to distribute the energy dissipated throughout the wireless sensor
network in order to minimize maintenance and maximize overall system
performance. Any communication protocol that involves synchronization of peer
nodes incurs some overhead for setting up the communication. We introduce a new
algorithm, e3D (energy-efficient Distributed Dynamic Diffusion routing
algorithm), and compare it to two other algorithms, namely directed, and random
clustering communication. We take into account the setup costs and analyze the
energy-efficiency and the useful lifetime of the system. In order to better
understand the characteristics of each algorithm and how well e3D really
performs, we also compare e3D with its optimum counterpart and an optimum
clustering algorithm. The benefit of introducing these ideal algorithms is to
show the upper bound on performance at the cost of an astronomical prohibitive
synchronization costs. We compare the algorithms in terms of system lifetime,
power dissipation distribution, cost of synchronization, and simplicity of the
algorithm. Our simulation results show that e3D performs comparable to its
optimal counterpart while having significantly less overhead.
