An efficient energy-hole alleviating algorithm for wireless sensor network based on energy-balanced clustering protocol

Abstract

Illegal nodes can send malicious data to WSN continuously, which will accelerate the energy consumption rate. Even if the cluster heads in the inner regions have been exhausted simultaneously, the ones in the outer regions may still hold sufficient energy resource. This situation is defined as energy-hole problem in WSN. To investigate the principle of such problem and design corresponding defense strategies, it is critical to analyze the configuration and distribution of cluster heads. According to the balance conditions of energy consumption, a novel mathematical model is formulated to accurately estimate the communication radius of cluster heads in network deployment. Then mobile sinks are introduced to gather the data transmitted by malicious nodes in circular regions. Considering the uniformity principle in collecting data and shortest path routing, the migration path of mobile sinks is calculated. An energy-hole alleviating algorithm is ultimately proposed based on the energy analysis in WSN. Finally, experimental results validate the efficiency and effectiveness of the proposed algorithm in energy-hole detection and mitigation.