Buffer-aware opportunistic routing for wireless sensor networks

Previous studies have shown that opportunistic routing (OR) can significantly improve the performance of wireless multi-hop networks, such as wireless adhoc networks and wireless sensor networks. However, most existing opportunistic routing schemes only consider node location as the priority metric in relay selection, where packets may accumulate in relays' packet buffer, especially in data intensive applications. This can increase end-to-end packet delay and inevitably introduce negative effects on network throughput. In this paper, Buffer-Aware Opportunistic Routing scheme (BAOR) is proposed. The proposed scheme combines the location and buffer length of relay candidates to prioritize the relay selection, so as to prevent the situation where a larger number of packets queue in the buffer of relays on the shortest path. Network simulation results demonstrate that the proposed BAOR outperforms traditional OR schemes in terms of both network throughput and end-to-end packet latency.