Shortest hop multipath algorithm for wireless sensor networks

Abstract

Shortest hop or distance path is one of the most common methods used for relaying messages in a wide variety of networks. It provides an efficient message relaying to destination in terms of energy and time. There are many algorithms for constructing shortest hop or distance path. However, according to our knowledge, no algorithm for constructing a shortest hop multipath for wireless sensor networks (WSNs) has yet been proposed in the literature. In this paper, we propose a novel distributed shortest hop multipath algorithm for WSNs in order to generate energy efficient paths for data dissemination or routing. The proposed algorithm generates shortest hop braided multipath to be used for fault-tolerance or load-balancing. It guarantees the BFS tree and generates near optimal paths in O(V.D + V) message complexity and O(D-2) time complexity regarding the communication costs towards the sink after termination of algorithm. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.