Delay-constrained energy-efficient cluster-based multi-hop routing in wireless sensor networks

Energy efficiency is the main objective in the design of a wireless sensor network (WSN). In many applications, sensing data must be transmitted from sources to a sink in a timely manner. This paper describes an investigation of the trade-off between two objectives in WSN design: minimizing energy consumption and minimizing end-to-end delay. We first propose a new distributed clustering approach to determining the best clusterhead for each cluster by considering both energy consumption and end-to-end delay requirements. Next, we propose a new energy-cost function and a new end-to-end delay function for use in an inter-cluster routing algorithm. We present a multi-hop routing algorithm for use in disseminating sensing data from clusterheads to a sink at the minimum energy cost subject to an end-to-end delay constraint. The results of a simulation are consistent with our theoretical analysis results and show that our proposed performs much better than similar protocols in terms of energy consumption and end-to-end delay.