Energy-balance routing and throughput maximization for wireless sensor networks

Several studies have demonstrated the benefits of using a mobile sink to reduce the energy consumption of nodes and to prevent the formation of energy holes in wireless sensor networks (WSNs). However, these benefits are dependent on the path taken by the mobile sink, particularly in delay-sensitive applications, as all sensed data must be collected within a given time constraint. WSN consists of low-cost nodes with limited battery power, and the battery replacement is not easy for WSN with thousands of physically embedded nodes, which means energy efficient routing protocol should be employed to offer a long-life work time. To achieve the aim, we need not only to minimize total energy consumption but also to balance WSN load. In this paper, we propose a General Self-Organized Tree-Based Energy-Balance routing protocol (GSTEB) which builds a routing tree using a process where, for each round, BS assigns a root node and broadcasts this selection to all sensor nodes. Subsequently, each node selects its parent by considering only itself and its neighbors' information, thus making GSTEB a dynamic protocol. Simulation results show that GSTEB has a better performance than other protocols in balancing energy consumption, thus prolonging the lifetime of WSN.