Multipath Routing in Wireless Sensor Networks: Survey and Research Challenges

A wireless sensor network is a large collection of sensor nodes with limited power supply and constrained computational capability. Due to the restricted communication range and high density of sensor nodes, packet forwarding in sensor networks is usually performed through multi-hop data transmission. Therefore, routing in wireless sensor networks has been considered an important field of research over the past decade. Nowadays, multipath routing approach is widely used in wireless sensor networks to improve network performance through efficient utilization of available network resources. Accordingly, the main aim of this survey is to present the concept of the multipath routing approach and its fundamental challenges, as well as the basic motivations for utilizing this technique in wireless sensor networks. In addition, we present a comprehensive taxonomy on the existing multipath routing protocols, which are especially designed for wireless sensor networks. We highlight the primary motivation behind the development of each protocol category and explain the operation of different protocols in detail, with emphasis on their advantages and disadvantages. Furthermore, this paper compares and summarizes the state-of-the-art multipath routing techniques from the network application point of view. Finally, we identify open issues for further research in the development of multipath routing protocols for wireless sensor networks

Exploiting the power of multiplicity: a holistic survey of network-layer multipath

The Internet is inherently a multipath network: For an underlying network with only a single path, connecting various nodes would have been debilitatingly fragile. Unfortunately, traditional Internet technologies have been designed around the restrictive assumption of a single working path between a source and a destination. The lack of native multipath support constrains network performance even as the underlying network is richly connected and has redundant multiple paths. Computer networks can exploit the power of multiplicity, through which a diverse collection of paths is resource pooled as a single resource, to unlock the inherent redundancy of the Internet. This opens up a new vista of opportunities, promising increased throughput (through concurrent usage of multiple paths) and increased reliability and fault tolerance (through the use of multiple paths in backup/redundant arrangements). There are many emerging trends in networking that signify that the Internet's future will be multipath, including the use of multipath technology in data center computing; the ready availability of multiple heterogeneous radio interfaces in wireless (such as Wi-Fi and cellular) in wireless devices; ubiquity of mobile devices that are multihomed with heterogeneous access networks; and the development and standardization of multipath transport protocols such as multipath TCP. The aim of this paper is to provide a comprehensive survey of the literature on network-layer multipath solutions. We will present a detailed investigation of two important design issues, namely, the control plane problem of how to compute and select the routes and the data plane problem of how to split the flow on the computed paths. The main contribution of this paper is a systematic articulation of the main design issues in network-layer multipath routing along with a broad-ranging survey of the vast literature on network-layer multipathing. We also highlight open issues and identify directions for future work

Energy Aware Routing Protocol for Energy Constrained Mobile Ad-hoc Networks

Dynamic topology change and decentralized makes routing a challenging task in mobile ad hoc network. Energy efficient routing is the most challenging task in MANET due to limited energy of mobile nodes. Limited power of batteries typically use in MANET, and this is not easy to change or replace while running communication. Network disorder can occur for many factors but in middle of these factors deficiency of energy is the most significant one for causing broken links and early partition of the network. Evenly distribution of power between nodes could enhance the lifetime of the network, which leads to improving overall network transmission and minimizes the connection request. To discourse this issue, we propose an Energy Aware Routing Protocol (EARP) which considers node energy in route searching process and chooses nodes with higher energy levels. The EARP aim is to establish the shortest route from source to destination that contains energy efficient nodes. The performance of EARP is evaluated in terms of packet delivery ratio, network lifetime, end-to-end delay and throughput. Results of simulation done by using NS2 network simulator shows that EARP can achieve both high throughput and delivery ratio, whereas increase network lifetime and decreases end-to-end delay

The support of multipath routing in IPv6-based internet of things

The development of IPv6-based network architectures for Internet of Things (IoT) systems is a feasible approach to widen the horizon for more effective applications, but remains a challenge. Network routing needs to be effectively addressed in such environments of scarce computational and energy resources. The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) specified the IPv6 Routing Protocol for Low Power and Lossy Network (RPL) to provide a basic IPv6-based routing framework for IoT networks. However, the RPL design has the potential of extending its functionality to a further limit and incorporating the support of advanced routing mechanisms. These include multipath routing which has opened the doors for great improvements towards efficient energy balancing, load distribution, and even more. This paper fulfilled a need for an effective review of recent advancements in Internet of Things (IoT) networking. In particular, it presented an effective review and provided a taxonomy of the different multipath routing solutions enhancing the RPL protocol. The aim was to discover its current state and outline the importance of integrating such a mechanism into RPL to revive its potentiality to a wider range of IoT applications. This paper also discussed the latest research findings and provided some insights into plausible follow-up researches

An Innovative Multiple Attribute Based Distributed Clustering with Sleep/Wake Scheduling Mechanism for WSN

Wireless sensor network is a dynamic field of networking and communication because of its increasing demand in critical Industrial and Robotics applications. Clustering is the technique mainly used in the WSN to deal with large load density for efficient energy conservation. Formation of number of duplicate clusters in the clustering algorithm decreases the throughput and network lifetime of WSN. To deal with this problem, advance distributive energy-efficient adaptive clustering protocol with sleep/wake scheduling algorithm (DEACP-S/W) for the selection of optimal cluster head is presented in this paper. The presented sleep/wake cluster head scheduling along with distributive adaptive clustering protocol helps in reducing the transmission delay by properly balancing of load among nodes. The performance of algorithm is evaluated on the basis of network lifetime, throughput, average residual energy, packet delivered to the base station (BS) and CH of nodes. The results are compared with standard LEACH and DEACP protocols and it is observed that the proposed protocol performs better than existing algorithms. Throughput is improved by 8.1% over LEACH and by 2.7% over DEACP. Average residual energy is increased by 6.4% over LEACH and by 4% over DEACP. Also, the network is operable for nearly 33% more rounds compared to these reference algorithms which ultimately results in increasing lifetime of the Wireless Sensor Network