Multipath routing for continuous query using energy metrics in wireless sensor networks

In this paper, we design and implement a k-multipath routing algorithm that allows a given source node send samples of data to a given sink node in a large scale sensor networks. Multipath routing can distribute the energy load onto the multiple routes and thus increase the lifetime and quality of the network. It is important to stress the fact that evenly regulating the routing task among the more nodes of the network can also protect a node from failure considering that a node with heavy duty is likely to deplete its power quickly. On the contrary, all the traffic would be shipped along only one path in the shortest path routing, corresponding to the heavily congested path case, which in turn leads to overload of the nodes along the optimal route between the sink and source pair, and finally shortens the lifetime of the network. However, multipath routing (sub-optimal routing) often brings additional latency. Our view is that minimizing energy×delay while meeting acceptable delays for applications can lead to significant power savings. Our simulation results demonstrate that our multipath routing approach can not only achieve minimizing delay, but also can be help to prolong the life-span of network, compared with the shortest path routing (single path routing SPR).