Improved Optimal Route Evaluation Method for Wireless Sensor Networks

It is well known that both a “minimal energy consuming path” and “balanced communication load among the nodes” are necessary criteria for route evaluation. To achieve acceptable performance, these two requirements must be well balanced. To provide this balance, we propose an improved optimal route evaluation method based on the principal component approach for wireless sensor networks. This method ensures a diversified evaluation and prompt dynamic load balance in different network monitoring environments. Further, the weighting factor of each evaluation indicator can be estimated using the principal component approach. This method can avoid the problem of requiring manual selection of weight factors based on experience, which lacks guidance based on scientific theories, is subjective, and may negatively affect evaluation precision. Comparison with other state-of-the-art algorithms confirms that the proposed evaluation function improves the performance of a network significantly.