RESEARCH ARTICLE Spin-MI: Energy Saving Routing Algorithm Based on SPIN Protocol in WSN Sudhakar Pandey • Pankaj Pal Received: 20 February 2013 / Revised: 5 June 2013 / Accepted: 21 November 2013 / Published online: 15 July 2014 Ó The National Academy of Sciences, India 2014 Abstract Data transmission in wireless domain is one of the major challenges in wireless sensor networks (WSN). Efficient use of energy and time is major field of research in wireless sensor networks; different routing protocols have been proposed to overcome these problems. In this paper we proposed a modified version of SPIN protocol named SPIN-MI and compared its performance with tra- ditional SPIN-BC protocol using broadcast communica- tion. We simulate it from two aspects using C and MATLAB: The consumption of energy and the number of alive nodes in the sensor networks. The simulation result shows that not only the problem of ‘‘Blind Forwarding’’ and ‘‘Data Unaccessibility’’ in SPIN those have been solved, but also extended the network life time and quick response to request is made. Keywords Routing protocols  SPIN  Wireless sensor network Introduction wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are becoming an increas- ingly important technology those will be used in a variety of applications such as public safety, environmental monitor- ing, medical, home and office security, transportation, and military [1, 2]. SPIN protocol is a basic data-centric routing protocol of wireless sensor networks [3]. As stated by America’s ‘‘Technology Review’’ magazine, WSNs will be the first dozens of new technologies in the future [4], and they will have a tremendous effect on the future of mankind’s way of life. Sensor nodes designed for a particular environment measure the environmental condition, sensor networks are application dependent. There is wide range of application of WSN that varies from health monitoring to battle field. Applications of Routing protocols and sensor networks are closely related, researchers have designed a variety of routing protocols, in which SPIN protocol [5] is designed grounded on metadata for the ideal lossless network. In SPIN protocol metadata is used to consult, which reduces the transmission of redundant data in the network, and make good use of resources. However, the use of metadata is not sufficient to overcome the problem of ‘‘Blind For- warding’’ and ‘‘Data unaccessible’’. The former would be a waste of energy; and the latter leads to that network information can’t be collected. Therefore, these two issues must be answered. Conventional Spin Protocol SPIN is a data-centric routing protocol. It fits under event driven data delivery model in which the nodes sense data and disseminate the data throughout the network by means of negotiation. SPIN nodes use three types of messages for communication [5, 6]: • ADV—When a node has new data; it can advertise this data using ADV message containing metadata (infor- mation of data). S. Pandey (&) Department of Information Technology, National Institute of Technology, Raipur 492010, India e-mail: spandey96@gmail.com P. Pal Department of Electrical Engineering, National Institute of Technology, Raipur 492010, India e-mail: Palpankaj03@gmail.com 123 Natl. Acad. Sci. Lett. (July–August 2014) 37(4):335–339 DOI 10.1007/s40009-014-0232-9