In wireless sensor networks (WSNs), features such as the burst of the data flows, limited energy of the nodes, many-to-one transmission, etc., often result in network congestion and unbalanced energy consumption. Using multi-path data transmission cannot only relieve network congestion, but also achieve balanced energy consumption. The ad hoc on-demand multipath distance vector routing protocol (AOMDV) is a reactive multi-path protocol for Ad-hoc networks. We propose an improved AOMDV protocol, called I_AOMDV protocol, which does not use the congested or low-energy nodes in the route discovery phase, and exchanges “the residual energy” and “the queue length” by means of ‘HELLO’ messages in the route maintenance phase. Meanwhile, it also introduces “congestion recovery time” and “the flag of residual energy” to the list of paths in order to make the I_AOMDV more adaptable to the static WSNs. Furthermore, based on the I_AOMDV, we also propose a new congestion control and balanced energy consumption strategy. The proposed congestion control strategy uses a new congestion detection scheme and sets the "recovery time" for the shortest path falling into congestion. In order to cope with unbalanced energy consumption, the proposed balanced energy consumption strategy sets the “the flag of residual energy” for each path. Simulation results show that the proposed congestion and balanced energy consumption strategy can reduce the expense of routing protocol, packet loss rate, and the difference of residual energy of nodes.
