Eco-friendly thermal aware routing protocol for habitat monitoring

One of the major applications of wireless sensor networks is in the field of environmental monitoring of the diverse and unique ecosystems and animal habitats. The networks of wireless sensor nodes are used to monitor the microclimates in the animal habitats and the animal behavior patterns. One of the main requirements of a habitat monitoring infrastructure is inconspicuous operation, which means the system should not alter the behavior of the species under study. These sensor networks produce heat as they have to communicate wirelessly, resulting in rise of the node's temperature. If the amount of heat produced by the nodes is too much or the temperature rise in the nodes due to communication is too high, the behavior of the species being monitored might be affected and the ecological balance might be disturbed. In this paper, we propose a routing protocol that reduces the amount of heat produced by the sensor nodes and also the maximum temperature rise in a node. The proposed protocol performs better in terms of reducing the amount of heat produced and maximum temperature rise compared to the shortest hop routing algorithm. Our protocol also maintains low packet delivery delay and low power consumption.