An Energy-Aware Routing Protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks Based on new combination of Genetic Algorithm & k-means

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) consist of large number of sensors which having capabilities such as sensing, computing, and communicating. Beside these features, sensors have limited computational and communication power. Therefore, energy is a challenging issue in WSN networks. Clusters-based routing protocols are used to maximize network lifetime. In this paper, we propose a new combination of K-means and improved GAs to reduce energy consumption and extend network lifetime. The proposed method, reduce energy consumption by finding the optimum number of cluster head (CHs) nodes using improved Genetic Algorithm (GA). To balance energy distribution, a k-means-based algorithm, dynamically cluster the network. The simulations in NS-2 show the proposed algorithm has longer network lifetime than famous algorithms like LEACH, GAEEP and GABEEC protocols. (C) 2015 Published by Elsevier B.V.