Path Recovery Based on Link-Level Fault Identification and Prediction-Triggered Intervention in Multi-Hop Networks: An Emulated-Wireless Testbed Evaluation

In edge-computing-based distributed services, data traverse wireless multi-hop paths; when a link stays connected while loss and delay increase, route switching does not occur and a degraded route remains in use. Existing approaches predict degradation or locate faults but fix the recovery scope in advance. This paper proposes a route recovery scheme that sets the recovery scope from link-level fault identification aggregated into node-level confirmation, while a quality forecast screens the normal state before link-state collection. The scheme was compared with eleven other configurations on a 14-node wired testbed emulating wireless link loss and delay from distance and channel models. The faulty-link identification F1 score was 0.9822. In the window 30–60 s after degradation onset, throughput was 16.17–16.40 Mbps with the proposed scheme against 1.03–3.67 Mbps for the routing protocol alone. The protocol did not react under its fixed cost, nor did an RTT-aware cost calibrated on normal-state data. Recovery completed about 3 s later than with a threshold-based trigger, but no false recovery occurred before degradation onset in 56 cycles and a single-link degradation did not lead to node-level recovery. Replacing the forecast trigger with a measured-throughput rule, or removing the forecast features from identification, left the outcome unchanged.