Residual energy-aware routing in WSNs using a controlled mobile sink

Abstract

Energy conservation is one of the key design issues in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs), which are formed by tiny sensor nodes that are difficult to be replaced or recharged after deployment. To address this challenge, routing protocols that are deployed in WSNs aim at prolonging the network lifetime by using energy conservation techniques. One of the available techniques is using dual-head clustering, which is used by the Dual Head Clustering Scheme (DHCS). Dual head clustering was introduced to minimize the challenges that are caused by clustered networks with a single cluster head, by dividing the workload that was initially handled by a single cluster between the two cluster heads. However, the scheme uses a static sink that introduces the “energy hole problem” a result of multi-hop communication. In this research, we developed a Dual Head Clustering Using a Controlled Mobile Sink (DCMS) as a solution to frequent sink position updates and multi-hop communication in WSN. DCMS uses a mobile sink and ensures that communication between the Cluster Head (CH) and the sink is direct. Furthermore, the protocol eliminates regular network updates about the position of the mobile sink by relying on highest residual energy of CH to collect information among clusters. The solution was designed and modeled using analytical modeling techniques. The performance of DCMS was evaluated against existing routing protocols which include DHCS and Energy-Aware Sink Mobility Algorithm (EASM). The results were presented in the form of graphs for easier interpretation. From the results, DCMS achieved higher throughput and lower values of energy consumption, because the protocol eliminates sink position updates and multi-hop communication which causes packet retransmission and network congestion. This was achieved by using a mobile sink, which directly communicates with the CH. However, when it comes to achieving lower delays in terms of data transmissions, DHCS with a static sink is able to achieve lower delays as the packets received by the CH are forwarded directly to the sink without incurring any delays. Finally, the research recommends deployment of DCMS in clustered WSNs to achieve energy conservation as well as high data rates. The WSN should be able to tolerate delay.