An energy efficient multi-hop routing protocol for terahertz wireless nanosensor networks

Abstract

Wireless nanosensor networks are novel networks where nanonodes can work in Terahertz band. Researches are mainly focused on physical layer while study of routing protocols in this field is still in an initial stage. Consequently, a novel energy efficient multi-hop routing protocol based on network conditions is proposed. In our routing protocol, the area of candidate nodes is narrowed to control the direction of multi-hop forwarding. A link cost function is established to trade off energy consumption, capacity and distance, taking the peculiarities of Terahertz channel into consideration. Several nodes with low link cost have the probability to be selected as a next hop, which prolongs the lifetime of nanosensor networks. Simulation results show that the protocol we proposed can achieve high throughput and low energy consumption, which is a suitable routing for Terahertz nanosenor networks.