With the increasing deployment of unmanned and energy-constrained sensor devices in large-scale wireless sensor networks, energy efficiency and network lifetime have become key considerations in designing ad hoc routing protocols. In this work, we propose a fully distributed, multi-path load-balancing routing protocol based on Dynamic Source Routing (DSR) to improve network lifetime performance. The new protocol is simulated in ns-2 and compared with the commonly used Destination-Sequenced Distance Vector (DSDV), Ad hoc On-Demand Distance Vector (AODV) and DSR protocols. Our simulation results show that the new routing protocol has improved network lifetime significantly without sacrificing packet delivery performance.
