Optimized Energy – Efficient Path Planning Strategy in WSN With Multiple Mobile Sinks

Recently, wireless sensor networks (WSNs) were perceived as the foundation infrastructure that paved the way to the emergence of the Internet of Things (IoT). However, a challenging issue exists when WSNs are integrated into the IoT because of high energy consumption in their nodes and poor network lifespan. Therefore, the elementary discussions in WSN are energy scarcity in sensor nodes, sensors' data exchange, and routing protocols. To address the aforesaid shortcomings, this paper develops an optimized energy-efficient path planning strategy that prolongs the network lifetime and enhances its connectivity. The proposed approach has four successive procedures: initially, the sensing field is partitioned into equal regions depending on the number of deployed mobile sinks that eliminate the energy-hole problem. A new heuristic clustering approach called stable election algorithm (SEA) is introduced to minimize the message exchange between sensor nodes and prevent frequent cluster heads rotation. A sojourn location determination algorithm is proposed based on the minimum weighted vertex cover problem (MWVCP) to find the best position for the sinks to stop and collect the data from cluster heads. Finally, three optimization techniques are utilized to evaluate the optimized mobile sinks' trajectories using multi-objective evolutionary algorithms (MOEAs). Whilst the performance of the developed work was evaluated in terms of cluster heads number, network lifetime, the execution time of the sinks' sojourn locations determination algorithm, the convergence rate of optimization techniques, and data delivery. The simulation scenarios conducted in MATLAB and the obtained results showed that the introduced approach outperformed comparable existing schemes. It succeeded in prolonging the network lifetime up to 66% compared to existing routing protocols.