A Virtual Multipath Routing Protocol for Reliable Data Delivery in Wireless Sensor Networks

Aiming at reliable data delivery in wireless sensor networks, virtual multipath routing (VMR) protocol is proposed. The defining aspect it differs from the traditional ones is it integrates path quality probing, data transmission and route optimization together. In this protocol, multiple paths are engaged in data delivery; meanwhile accumulated transmission times (ATT) of each packet from source to sink along a path have been collected. Low quality paths are identified and filtered out via interval estimation on the expectation of ATT, so route optimization is achieved step by step. Simulation results show VMR is competent to deal with poor link quality and achieves better energy efficiency and reliability comparing with typical on-demand routing AODV.