Energy-Efficient Cooperative Routing Scheme for Heterogeneous Wireless Sensor Networks

Generally, routing techniques are essential for Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) to deliver data packets to their destinations (also known as sinks). For a practical application, sensors are deployed to monitor environmental changes and events. Most WSNs detect specific events in their specific environments. But, different WSNs may monitor different events with different sensors in the same area. For example, a smart-home WSN deploys thermal sensors/meters to measure indoor and outdoor temperatures, body-temperature sensors to detect thief intrusion, etc. Also, in the underlying house, there is a health WSN which utilizes physiological sensors to monitor patients' health condition. In other words, several WSNs of different purposes co-exist in the same geographical area. Currently, each WSN's data delivery is independent from others'. Basically, if all sensors in such a multi-WSNs environment can share their routing paths/nodes and relay event packets for other WSNs, the delivery efficiency can be enhanced since many more sensors can be found there for packet relay. Consequently, the transmission energy can be reduced since energy consumed for wireless transmission is proportional to d
²
where d is the transmission distance between sender and receiver. Therefore, in this study, we propose an energy saving routing mechanism, named Energy-Efficient Cooperative Routing Scheme for Heterogeneous Wireless Sensor Networks (EERH for short), in which several WSNs deployed in the same geographical environment form a heterogeneous sensor network and sensors relay packets for its own WSN and also for other WSNs. Routing paths are dynamically established according to the transmission directions of event packets and the residual energy of the underlying sensors and their neighbors. In addition, the packets routed to the same direction by the same sensors are aggregated to save delivering energy. Moreover, the network parameters of the EERH, like propagation delay of an event packet and the transmission distance of a sensor, are adjustable so as to satisfy the practical environment needs. Simulation results show that the EERH efficiently extends the lifetime of a heterogeneous WSN.