Cost-based hierarchical energy efficient routing scheme for WSNs

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) has attracted a lot of attention in the recent past. WSNs have a lot of application in robotics such as path planning, mapping, localization and mapping inversely robots are also being widely used in solving WSNs problems like node localization, providing mobile battery chargers, data aggregation and detecting and reacting to sensor failure. WSNs offer an economical, flexible, scalable and pragmatic solution in many situations but they do have certain constraints e.g. limited non-rechargeable energy resource, small memory /computational ability and low transmitter power. However the most critical is the energy resource as once the battery power is depleted, the node is no longer usable. Hence it is extremely important to adopt strategies that would conserve energy. In this research work a new routing scheme has been proposed that makes use of the heterogeneity of the network, inter-nodal distances and distances of nodes from the sink, while assigning specific roles to the designated nodes. The proposed scheme thus selects an optimum path, with appropriate number of node-BS links, for carrying the data to the sink in each round. To compare the scheme with other existing protocols simulations have been performed and the results show that the proposed scheme offers better performance in terms of energy efficiency with network-stability, lifespan and quality of network.