TABS: Link Loss Tolerant Data Routing Protocol for Multi-hop Wireless Sensor Networks

Routing techniques of multi-hop wireless sensor networks try to mask low-power radio properties such as link asymmetry, unidirectionality and unreliability using different techniques like blacklisting, link reliability metrics etc. In addition to associated overhead, these approaches limit routing options. In this paper, we design a novel link loss tolerant data routing protocol, called TABS (Try-Ancestors-Before-Spreading), for multi-hop wireless sensor networks. TABS effectively combines the benefits of wireless broadcast advantages with traditional retransmission based routing while evades route explosion. Also, this protocol instantaneously adapts to network dynamics without periodic link quality maintenance. We evaluate the performance of TABS implementation using TinyOS on a 56-node 802.15.4 radio based test-bed. We analyze TABS performance on dense and sparse networks, and static and dynamic network topologies. TABS shows over 98% success rate to deliver packet between all pair of nodes. In addition, we compare the performance of TABS with that of hop-by-hop retransmission based routing, periodic link quality estimation based routing and the routing that exploits wireless broadcast advantages.