Performance evaluation of QoS aware multipath extensions for the Dynamic MANET On-demand protocol in wireless sensor networks

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) consist of densely deployed sensor nodes, which have limited computational capabilities, power supply, and communication bandwidth. How to efficiently and reliably deliver sensing data through a large field of sensors remains a research challenge. The multipath routing technique is a favourite alternative for sensor networks with objectives to achieve better energy efficiency and network robustness in case of node failures. In this paper we propose a multipath extension to Dynamic MANET On-demand (DYMO), the most recent routing protocol proposed by the MANET working group, by computing multiple node disjoint paths within a single route discovery attempt with minimal additional overhead. Our main objective is to reduce the frequency of route discovery providing resilience (fault tolerance) that is specially helpful in scenarios with node mobility in WSN and the assurance of quality of service (QoS) defined by the delay and the error rate metrics in order to improves the reliability of data communication and prolong the network lifetime. The proposed protocol called DYMO_MQ is implemented and tested in NS2 and shows significant improvements in routing overhead, end to end delay and energy consumption compared to DYMO and AODV multipath with QoS routing protocol.