Power Aware Routing Protocols in Wireless Sensor Network

Abstract

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) have gained importance with a rapid growth in their applications during the past decades. There has also been a rise in the need for energy-efficient and scalable routing along with the data aggregation protocols for the large scale deployments of sensor networks. The traditional routing algorithms suffer from drawbacks such as the presence of one hop long distance data transmissions, very large or very small clusters within a network at the same moment, over-accumulated energy consumption within the cluster-heads (CHs) etc. The lifetime of WSNs is also decreased due to these drawbacks. To overcome them, we have proposed a new method for the Multi Hop, Far-Zone and Load-Balancing Hierarchical-Based Routing Algorithm for Wireless Sensor Network (MFLHA). Various improvements have been brought forward by MFLHA. The first contribution of the proposed method is the existence of a large probability for the nodes with higher energy to become the CH through the introduction of the energy decision condition and energy-weighted factor within the electing threshold of the CH. Secondly, MFLHA forms a Far-Zone, which is defined as a locus where the sensors can reach the CH with an energy less than a threshold. Finally, the energy consumption by CHs is reduced by the introduction of a minimum energy cost method called the Multi-Hop Inter-Cluster routing algorithm. Our experimental results indicate that MFLHA has the ability to balance the network energy consumption effectively as well as extend the lifetime of the networks. The proposed method outperforms the competitors especially in the middle range distances.