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

Energy Aware Multipath Routing in Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless Sensor Networks(WSNs) are made of sensor nodes with restricted battery life and transmission capability. In this work we propose an energy efficient multipath routing algorithm in WSN. This protocol is designed to improve the latency, resiliency and efficiency through discovering multiple paths from the source to the destination. It has a sink initiated Route Discovery process with the location information of the source known to the sink. There are two types of nodes which are used here one is primary and the other is alternate. At the end of the route formation one primary path and multiple number of alternate paths are built,and, all nodes except the primary are put to sleep mode which helps us to save energy and generate a collision free path, the primary path is used to transmit the data from source to the sink and if the route disrupts, the next best alternate route is used for the purpose and if no path exists between the source and destination then process starts from the beginning. Our simulation finds the latency, packet delivery ratio, average control packet overhead and total energy consumed. The proposed protocol has 12% (approx.) less control packet overhead in comparison to MR2 and LIEMRO,5% less average energy consumption in comparison to MR2 and 28% less average energy consumption in comparison to LIEMRO. Regarding latency the proposed protocol has similar result to MR2 but in comparison to LIEMRO the algorithm is 24% faster. Lastly in case of Packet Delivery Ratio the proposed protocol gives 5% better result in comparison to MR2 and, 12% better result in comparison to LIEMRO on an average