An Energy*Delay efficient multi-hop routing scheme for wireless sensor networks

Sensors have very scarce resources in terms of memory, energy and computational capacities. Wireless sensor network is composed of a large number of such sensor nodes densely deployed in inhospitable physical environments. Energy efficient information dissemination throughout such a network is still a challenge. Though dissemination of information with minimum energy consumption is a key concern in wireless sensor networks, it often introduces additional delay. In this work, we first propose an energy and delay efficient multi-hop routing scheme called C²E²S (Cluster and Chain based Energy*Delay Efficient Routing Scheme) for wireless sensor networks. This scheme is a combination of cluster-based and chain-based approaches and the way to form clusters and chains in this work is center-based approach. To reduce a large number of communication overheads due to this approach, we propose a modified-center-based approach called passive-BS-based approach. Next, we propose (1) an energy and delay aware routing algorithm for sensors within each k-hop cluster, and (2) an Energy-efficient chain construction algorithm for cluster heads. To evaluate the appropriateness of our approach, we analyze the evaluated performance against existing protocols in terms of communication overhead, the number of communication rounds (network lifetime), total amount of energy dissipated in the system over time, network delay and Energy*Delay metric using SENSE simulator. The simulation results show that C ²E²S consumes less energy, balances the energy and delay metrics, and extends the network lifetime as compared to other approaches.