The efficiency of multi-hop communication is a function of the time required for data transfer, or throughput. A key determinant of throughput is the reliability of packet transmission, as measured by the packet reception rate. We follow a data-driven statistical approach to dynamically determine a link quality estimate (LQE), which provides a good predictor of packet reception rates. Our goal is to enable efficient multi-hop communication for applications characterized by data-intensive, bursty communication in large
sensor networks. Statistical analysis and experiments carried out on a network of 20 Imote2 sensors under a variety of environmental conditions show that the
metric is a superior predictor of throughput for bursty data transfer workloads.unpublishedis peer reviewe
