A masters thesis focussing on achieving improvements in transmission reliability and energy efficiency for a battery-powered wireless sensor node on the edge of an industrial heterogeneous wireless network that consists predominantly of mains-powered nodes. A router-switching technique is proposed to allow the sensor node to make gains in transmission reliability and energy efficiency by taking advantage of the scenario where multiple wireless routers are in range and switching between them, instead of only being able to transmit to one router. The research involves simulation of a number of network scenarios where the router-switching technique is enabled and disabled, to measure the advantage gained for the sensor in terms of its functional lifetime. The simulation is based on an abstract model that focusses on the edge of the mains-powered area of the network, where the battery-powered sensor is located. The simulation results show that for many cases, router-switching provides a higher level of transmission reliability and lower levels of energy consumption than the scenario where router-switching is disabled, as well as improvements in data loss rates.