An energy-aware and load-balancing routing scheme for wireless sensor networks

Abstract

Energy and memory limitations are considerable constraints of sensor nodes in wireless sensor networks (WSNs). The limited energy supplied to network nodes causes WSNs to face crucial functional limitations. Therefore, the problem of limited energy resource on sensor nodes can only be addressed by using them efficiently. In this research work, an energy-balancing routing scheme for in-network data aggregation is presented. This scheme is referred to as Energy-aware and load-Balancing Routing scheme for Data Aggregation (hereinafter referred to as EBR-DA). The EBR-DA aims to provide an energy efficient multiple-hop routing to the destination on the basis of the quality of the links between the source and destination. In view of this goal, a link cost function is introduced to assess the quality of the links by considering the new multi-criteria node weight metric, in which energy and load balancing are considered. The node weight is considered in constructing and updating the routing tree to achieve dynamic behavior for event-driven WSNs. The proposed EBR-DA was evaluated and validated by simulation, and the results were compared with those of InFRA and DRINA by using performance metrics for dense static networks.