Balanced and Efficient Energy Multi-hop Routing Algorithm in Heterogenous Wireless Sensor Networks

Background: Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) consists of a set of nodes that collect information from a given area, then cooperate with each other to send it to the Base Station (BS). Since the power resources of the nodes are restricted, a special treatment for their available power is mightily required. In MH routing algorithms, finding the optimal path to route data from a source to destination is one of the most interesting issues. This paper presents BEERAD, a new algorithm for multi-hop (MH) communication between nodes to conserve the energy consumption and extend the network lifetime of the nodes. Methods: Since the sensing, processing, transmitting and receiving tasks consume a valuable part of node energy over time, they must be considered during the path selection process. BEERAD is a Dijkstra-based algorithm which not only accepts the total power consumption at both nodes as the weight of the path but also considers the nodes' residual energy. Results: Several metrics are used to evaluate the available paths in order to select the optimal path, such as; Energy consumption, hop counts, and battery power. These metrics can be considered separately or in combination. BEERAD is tested with various scenarios of WSN. The Simulation results show that it has better performance in comparison with other existing ones from the previous metrics point of view. Conclusion: In the light of BEERAD, this proposal was incorporated as Multi-hop routing protocol being evaluated through simulation. The proposed protocol balances the energy of nodes all over the network over the network lifetime, avoiding the hot spot problem; hence the stability period of the network is enhanced. It also increases the total throughput of the network.