A Reliable and QoS Aware Multi-path Routing Algorithm in WSNs

Satisfying Quality of Service (QoS) requirements(e.g. bandwidth and delay constraints) for the different QoS based applications of WSNs raises significant challenges. Each algorithm that is used for packet routing in such applications should be able to establish tradeoffs between end to end delay parameter and energy consumption. Therefore, enabling QoS applications in sensor networks requires energy and QoS awareness in different layers of the protocol stack. In this paper, we propose a Reliable and QoS Aware Multipath routing algorithm in wireless sensor networks namely RQMP. This protocol uses control message together with a Forward Error Correction (FEC) technique to establish a reliable connection between source and destination. RQMP maximizes the network lifetime via data transmission across multiple paths as load balancing that causes energy consume uniformly throughout the network. RQMP uses the residual energy, available buffer size, Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) and distance to sink to predict the best next hop through the paths construction phase. Also our proposed protocol employs a queuing model to handle both real time and non-real-time traffic. Simulation results show that our proposed protocol is more efficient than previous algorithms in providing QoS requirements and minimizing energy consumption.