Integrating route optimization into data transmissions for reliable routing in wireless sensor networks

Aiming at reliable data delivery in wireless sensor networks, IRON, a novel routing protocol is proposed. The defining aspect it differs from the traditional ones is it integrates path quality information collection into data transmission and achieves route optimization dynamically and adaptively. IRON works in a ldquomonitor-and-adjustrdquo way: route is selected for every data packet independently according to route selection probability vector (RSPV); real time route quality information is gathered in the course of packets transmission and fed back by sink periodically; with interval estimation, source node identifies and filters out paths of low quality and adjusts RSPV accordingly. Simulation results in both semi-static and dynamic environment show IRON is competent to deal with adverse, dynamic, bandwidth constrained WSN network and outperforms typical reliable routing protocol AODV_ETX in both energy efficiency and reliability.