Opportunistic routing in wireless sensor networks: A review

Opportunistic routing (OR) is promising routing technique, which takes advantage of broadcast nature of wireless communication. The key idea behind OR is to utilize overheard packets from a neighbouring node, which in traditional routing technology were dropped or ignored. By utilizing these packets, OR saves the cost of retransmission and achieves energy efficiency which is one of the most challenging problem in design of routing protocol in wireless sensor networks. This paper reviews existing opportunistic routing protocols in wireless sensor networks. It also gives details about basic concept and components of OR in WSNs.