On routing in lossy wireless networks with realistic channel models

This paper concerns routing performance in lossy wireless networks with Rayleigh fading channel. We investigate the efficiency of a few representative deterministic and opportunistic routing protocols under light-loaded traffic conditions. This work deviates from existing work that assumes idealistic packet reception, and is thus of practical relevant. Our study shows that opportunistic routing significantly outperforms its deterministic counterparts in average effective progress in a single hop transmission. In deterministic routing schemes, tuning of parameters based on node density is critical to achieve optimal performance.