Energy Aware Multi-Hop Routing Protocol for WSNs

Abstract

In this paper we propose an energy-efficient multi-hop routing protocol for wireless sensor networks (WSNs). The nature of sensor nodes with limited batteries and inefficient protocols are the key limiting factors of the sensor network lifetime. We aim to provide for a green routing protocol that can be implemented in a wireless sensor network. Our proposed protocol's most significant achievement is the reduction of the excessive overhead typically seen in most of the routing protocols by employing fixed clustering and reducing the number of cluster head changes. The performance analysis indicates that overhead reduction significantly improves the lifetime as energy consumption in the sensor nodes can be reduced through an energy-efficient protocol. In addition the implementation of the relay nodes allows the transmission of collected cluster data through inter cluster transmissions. As a result the scalability of a wireless sensor network can be increased. The usage of relay nodes also has a positive impact on the energy dissipation in the network.