A new on the fly energy-efficient opportunistic routing in wireless multi-hop networks

ABSTRACT Wireless channels have a broadcast nature based on which opportunistic routing protocols work. In opportunistic routing protocols, packets are forwarded by the intermediate nodes that hear their transmissions, which are called candidate forwarders. In most of these algorithms, the forwarder list is pre-determined. However, the energy-efficient selection of the forwarder list is a research topic that is not considered well. Energy Efficient OPportunistic Routing algorithm (EEOPR) is presented in this paper in which the forwarders are determined on the packets’ fly. EEOPR is a flexible method that performs the routing process locally, and the candidate forwarders are selected during the routing and for each packet. The process of the candidate nodes’ selection and their packet forwarding are managed by the Genetic algorithm according to the nodes’ remaining energy and their regions. Simulation results show that network performance is improved in EEOPR compared to ROMER and CORP-M in terms of throughput, the number of duplicate packets, and the network nodes’ residual energy.