RANC: Opportunistic Multi-path Routing Protocol in WSNs Using Reality-Aware Network Coding

Energy efficiency is one of the primary concerns when designing routing protocol in wireless sensor networks (WSNs). In this paper, we design an opportunistic multi-path routing protocol (RANC) using network coding technique facing the realistic link in WSNs. RANC uses Reality-Aware Network Coding technique to reduce energy consumption. During the encoding process, the local topology, the LQI between nodes, and the current received packets are considered together in RANC. To evaluate the proposed protocol, we conduct intensive simulation using TOSSIM simulator. Simulation results show that the protocol can improve network energy efficiency without sacrificing much data reception rate of sink node.