This application provides a data sending method and a communication apparatus. The method includes: A first node determines, based on a quality of a channel between the first node and a second node, a sending time for starting to send data, where the first node is one of several candidate previous-hop nodes of the second node. The first node starts to send the data to the second node at the sending time. According to the data sending method, when a node needs to send data to a next-hop node of the node, the node may determine, based on quality of a channel between the node and the next-hop node of the node, a sending time for starting to send the data.