EEMR: An energy-efficient multi-hop routing protocol for wireless sensor networks

Efficient routing protocol will receive a prolonged network lifetime. In this paper we propose an energy-efficient multi-hop routing protocol for wireless sensor networks (EEMR). It mainly includes nodes clustering and inter- cluster multi-hop routing selection. In clustering stage, we introduce an uneven clustering mechanism. Cluster heads which are closer to the base station (BS) have smaller cluster size than those farther from BS, thus they can preserve some energy for the purpose of inter-cluster data forwarding. What is more, we propose an energy-efficient multi-hop routing protocol executed by BS for inter-cluster communication. Our strategy is making the most of BS's energy, so the node energy in the network is saved furthest. Simulation results show that EEMR clearly prolongs the network lifetime over HEED.