Many sensor applications may wish to use routes that stay stable and reliable for long periods of time. Toward this end, a node can measure or estimate the link quality to each of its neighbors and then select a next hop neighbor that increases the probability of a successful transmission. However, this metric is rarely used alone. A routing protocol could identify several minimum-hop paths and then select the one with the highest total or average link quality along these paths. In networks with mobile nodes, a routing protocol could also use the link stability metric, which measures how likely it is that a link will be available in the future. These metrics can be used to bias route selection toward more robust paths and stationary nodes.