An enhanced energy optimization routing protocol for WSNs

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have received increasing attention due to their broad application prospects. However, the nature of sensor nodes, i.e., limited battery life and inefficient protocols, greatly reduces the sensor networks' lifetime. Therefore, determining how to extend their lifetime has become an important issue for WSNs. This paper focuses on the technique of extending the networks' lifetime by reducing and balancing energy consumption and proposes an enhanced energy optimization routing protocol (EEORP) for WSNs. EEORP proposes a grid-based cluster head (CH) election algorithm and introduces the energy weight and declaration number order weight factors to reduce the energy consumption in the rotation of CHs. EEORP adopts the dynamic clustering algorithm to reduce the energy consumption in intra-cluster data collection. The hop-count gradient field and grid distance are also introduced in EEORP to minimize the energy consumption in inter-cluster forwarding of the data. Our proposed protocol (EEORP) shows better performance than the existing protocols (LEACH, IEE-LEACH and EAMR) in terms of the networks' lifetime and data throughput in WSNs, as has been demonstrated experimentally.