An energy efficient GA based routing algorithm for two-tiered sensor networks

Routing plays a major role in increasing the energy efficiency of a wireless sensor network. In a cluster based wireless sensor network, cluster head can forward the data to the base station either directly or indirectly (multi-hoping). However, in multi-hop routing energy saving is more as compared to direct transmission. Further, the selection of energy efficient routing schedules helps in increasing the network lifetime. In this paper, we propose an Energy Efficient Genetic Algorithm based Routing (EEGAR) approach, which selects the next forwarding node on the basis of energy consumption in communication and forwarding node's current energy. Simulation results show that the proposed routing approach made network more energy efficient that the existing approaches in terms of network lifetime, energy consumption, throughput and the number of hops.