A Gradient-Based Multi-Path Routing Protocol for Low Duty-Cycled Wireless Sensor Networks

Low duty cycled sleep scheduling can largely prolong the lifetime of a Wireless Sensor Network (WSN). However, it also brings big challenge to the design of efficient routing protocols. Inappropriate selection of routes can largely offset the efficiency of a sleep scheduling mechanism. This paper aims to provide a simple but efficient forwarding discipline for packet routing in a low duty cycled WSN wherein each node chooses its wakeup slot in a pseudo-random manner. In such a duty-cycled WSN, a big problem is how a node can make a forwarding decision in order to obtain an acceptable End-To-End (E2E) delivery latency as well as high energy efficiency.