Experimental Study of Load Balancing Routing for Improving Lifetime in Sensor Networks

Organizing wireless sensor networks (WSNs) using energy efficient routing tree enables the efficient utilization of the limited energy resources of the deployed sensor nodes. However, the problem of unbalanced energy consumption and the unbalanced workload exists, and it is tightly bound to the role and to the location of a particular node in the network. This paper presents a detailed performance study of a novel load-balancing routing algorithm using a real-world WSN platform. In this routing algorithm, the parent selection process depends on three factors; two potential factors: the residual power in the intermediate sensor node and the channel state; and the hop count as a third tier-break factor. In WSNs, the significant resource constraints of the sensor nodes combined with the irregularity of a many-to-one traffic pattern have encouraged the development of an energy efficient load-balancing wireless routing algorithm. Since the communications overheads are the major energy consumer during a sensor node's operation, the algorithm demonstrates minimal overheads in low power multi-hop communications.