Cluster based energy efficient routing protocol for heterogeneous wireless sensor networks

With the advancement in recent technologies, wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have emerged to become one of the key research areas. Sensor nodes in WSN are deployed randomly to sense the events that occur in an area. Clustering of sensor nodes in a wireless sensor network will result in better energy efficiency and topology management. In many scenarios, wireless sensor networks are deployed in remote areas and in hostile environments where batteries cannot be recharged or replaceable. In real world applications, heterogeneous sensor nodes with different initial energies in a WSN are more preferable to prolong stability period, network lifetime, and throughput. The main objective of this article is to design and develop a cluster-based energy efficient routing protocol for heterogeneous wireless sensor networks (CEER). The proposed CEER routing protocol is based on the residual energy of all the sensor nodes in each round, distance of each sensor node from the base station, weighted election probabilities and reliability of a sensor node and the network. It is found from the results that, the proposed CEER routing protocol provides better stability, network lifetime, and throughput as compared with the existing routing protocols of heterogeneous wireless sensor networks.