Mobile Sink-Based Energy Efficient Clustering Protocol to Prolong the Lifetime of Wireless Sensor Network

Improving energy efficiency is one of the most critical challenges to prolong the wireless sensor networks (WSNs) lifetime. That is because sensor nodes usually have limited energy resources. This study proposes a mobile sink-based energy rotated hybrid energy efficient distributed (MS-ERHEED) protocol to enhance energy efficiency in WSNs. Sensors in this protocol are classified into clusters. The cluster head (CH) is rotated among the sensors within the cluster according to their energy level. Therefore, the re-clustering process is not required every round. The mobile sink moves to a new location in every round based on the residual energy and locations of the CHs. The proposed protocol is simulated extensively by considering two scenarios: uniformly deployed network and non-uniformly deployed network. The results show a better performance in MS-ERHEED protocol when compared to other existing protocols based on several energy efficiency metrics and the data packets' number received at the sink.