Switching policy based energy aware routing algorithm for maximizing lifetime in wireless sensor networks

Abstract

Data collection is one of the fundamental operations in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs). Sensor nodes can sense the data and forward the sensed data to the sink in multi hop communication. During the process of data collection, nodes consume a significant amount of energy by transmitting and receiving of data. Therefore, the key challenge is to minimize the energy dissipation of the nodes so as the network lifetime is maximized. In this paper, we propose a Switching Policy based Energy Aware Routing algorithm (SPEAR) for WSNs that aims to reduce energy usage of nodes and thus extends the network lifetime. In a data collection round, SPEAR constructs an energy balanced data collection tree considering the residual energy level of nodes. Furthermore, a switching policy is introduced to achieve energy balancing and longer lifetime. The proposed SPEAR directs some sensor nodes to switch to the new parents with higher energy when the energy level of the older parent is below some threshold value. The proposed method is loop less and dynamic in nature. Our algorithm is validated through simulation and compared with the existing routing protocol using some performance metrics. Simulation results demonstrate that SPEAR improves the network lifetime, alive nodes count and average residual energy significantly.