Successful integration of pervasive sensor networks in mission critical applications depends on the ability of these networks to cope with and reasonably perform under the worst-case scenarios. One of the key performance measures is the network's ability to route information from the source node to the intended destination. This paper introduces a general framework with which worst-case routing performance of sensor networks can be evaluated and compared. Ultimately, our method can either be

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... d as a design optimization tool, or a decision making tool to select and price contending sensor network designs. Formulation and Notation The network is modeled with a digraph G = (V, E), where V , E, and Π are the node, edge and path sets of G. Two nodes s and d ∈ V are the source and destination nodes, and Π ⊂ Π denotes the set of all paths from s to d.