Congestion detection and control algorithms for multipath data forwarding in sensor networks

Recently, there have been a number of research works on multipath data forwarding mechanisms that can increase the source data transmission throughput, data security and enhance the network lifetime. However, a congestion control mechanism dedicated for multipath routing is rarely found in the literature. This work first proposes a source data packet loading scheme over multiple paths and then presents congestion detection and control algorithms suited for multipath data forwarding. Our congestion detection is based on buffer occupancy of a node and the control algorithm is driven by preconceived packet loading rates maintained at each source node. The simulation results show that our schemes exhibit better performance than the existing ones.