Opportunistic Routing Protocols for Wireless Sensor Networks: A Survey

One of the most discussed topics in Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) is the routing protocol used in the networks. These protocols largely affect the performance and the lifetime of the network as transmission of data uses a significant proportion of the total energy in WSNs. The sensors in WSNs run using batteries thereby making energy consumption an important design constraint for them. Over the years a number of protocols have been suggested and implemented, however even today a lot of research is done on routing protocols for WSNs as a part of the continuous effort to increase the lifespan of these networks. Opportunistic routing (OR) is a concept which is a combination of routing protocol and media access control. This paper gives an overview of the concept of OR and discusses its variants.