Abstract
In wireless sensor networks (WSNs), sensors gather information about the physical world and the base station makes decision and then performs appropriate actions upon the environment. This technology enables a user to effectively sense and monitor from a distance in real-time. WSNs demand real-time forwarding which means messages in the network are delivered according to their end-to-end deadlines (packet lifetime). This paper proposes a novel real-time routing protocol with load distribution (RTLD) that ensures high packet throughput with minimized packet overhead and prolongs the lifetime of WSN. The routing depends on optimal forwarding (OF) decision that takes into account of the link quality (LQ), packet delay time and the remaining power of next hop sensor nodes. The proposed mechanism has been successfully studied through simulation work. Copyright (C) 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.