Abstract
Globally unique ID allocation is usually not applicable in a sensor network due to the massive production of cheap sensor nodes, the limited bandwidth, and the size of the payload. However, locally unique IDs are still necessary for nodes to implement unicast communications to save power consumption. Several solutions have been proposed for locally unique ID assignment in sensor networks. However, they bring much communication overhead, which is not desirable due to the limited power supply in a sensor node. Combined with a directed diffusion communication paradigm, a reactive ID assignment scheme with security mechanisms is proposed in this paper. It defers ID conflict resolution until data communications are initiated and thus saves communication overhead.