CHIRON: An energy-efficient chain-based hierarchical routing protocol in wireless sensor networks

Due to the power restriction of sensor nodes, efficient routing, in wireless sensor networks, is a critical approach to saving node's energy and thus prolonging the network lifetime. Even the chain-based routing is one of significant routing mechanisms, several common flaws, such as data propagation delay and redundant transmission, are associated. In this paper, we propose an energy efficient Chain-Based Hierarchical Routing Protocol, named as CHIRON, to alleviate such deficiencies. Based on the BeamStar concept, the main idea of CHIRON is to split the sensing field into a number of smaller areas, so that it can create multiple shorter chains to reduce the data transmission delay and redundant path, and therefore effectively conserve the node energy and prolong the network lifetime. Simulation results show that, in contrast to Enhanced PEGASIS and PEGASIS protocols, the proposed CHIRON can achieve about 15% and 168% improvements on average data propagation delay, 30% and 65% improvements on redundant transmission path, respectively. By these contributions, the network lifetime can also be extended to about 14%~7% and 50%~23%, under various small and large simulation areas, respectively.