The sensor nodes need to transmit data reliably via the
network despite having only a limited power supply available.
Hence, energy efficiency and reliability are both vital
for WSNs. One important disadvantage of multihop (tree or
mesh), in general, is that the power consumption of the nodes
near the base station is much higher as they are used in data
transmission to the base station and hence suffer energy drain.
A possible solution to minimize energy usage and maximize
fault tolerance is to usemultihoming. This is used in the Internet
and provides multiple connections (multiple routes) between
points thus introducing a degree of fault tolerance and ensuring
that no extra energy is required to transmit data. Aboelela et al.
[1] mapped every node in the network to two clusters. One set
of nodes operated as guardians of the clusters and cluster nodes
transmitted via two designated cluster guardians. Each cluster
guardian thus acted as a relay node and forwarded data from
one cluster to the other or to the base station for processing.