A Reliable and Energy-Efficient Opportunistic Routing Protocol for Dense Lossy Networks

Power conservation and reliable data delivery are two most critical issues in the design of routing protocols for wireless networks, especially for dense lossy networks. However, traditional routing protocols, which deliver packets along predetermined routing paths with unnecessarily high transmit power, cannot cope well with dynamic and lossy wireless mediums under excessive interference. In order to prolong the lifetime of networks and improve the reliability of networks, this letter proposes a reliable and energy-efficient opportunistic routing (REOR) protocol. REOR effectively utilizes path diversity by jointly selecting optimal transmit power and optimal forwarder set, which significantly postpones the death of nodes and ensures persistent network connectivity with dynamic workload sharing approach. Extensive simulation results demonstrate that REOR achieves up to 50% reliability improvement and 30% energy conservation compared to the benchmark, i.e., the IPv6 routing protocol for low-power and lossy networks.