A Routing Metric for Lossy Multipath Networks

Exploiting latest physical layer trends requires specific higher layer protocols capable to take advantage of the proposed features with limited overhead. In the paper, we propose a routing metric specifically designed to enable communications with errors over wireless links. This paradigm called lossy forwarding is based on relaying corrupted packets then using special decoding at the destination to retrieve the initial information from multiple -usually unexploitable- packets. Our solution empowers the lossy forwarding with means for selecting the adequate multiple routes for forwarding erroneous frames when no error free routes are available. We show through simulations that optimal selection can achieve up to 18% throughput gain.