Reliability Based Routing in Wireless Sensor Networks

Sensor network deployed to recover from disaster or in military applications pose a great challenge in reliable sensed data delivery with limited power consumption. Due to the small transmission range of sensor nodes the data is forwarded using multiple hops where unexpected node failure is common at each hop. Routing techniques in sensor network gives priority to reliable transmission as the loss of important information prevents the sensor network from fulfilling its primary purpose and hence this information loss should be avoided. The commonly used routing protocols uses single path routing or multiple path routing techniques to deliver the data, without differentiating between more reliable information from less reliable and hence the overhead involved is same for all information. It leads to wastage of network resources. Thus the routing techniques evolved in sensor network should be capable of delivering the information at desired reliability at a proportionate communication cost by considering the importance of the information.