An energy-efficient routing method of wireless sensor networks

In wireless sensor networks(WSNs), as sensor nodes are characterized by having specific requirements such as limited energy availability, low memory and reduced processing power, energy efficiency is a key issue in designing the network routing. In the existing clustering-based routing protocols for the WSNs, the cluster-heads are usually selected randomly and do a lot of work, which may cause unbalanced energy consumption and thus short network lifetime. Based on this approach, the paper proposes a method that a cluster-head distributes energy load evenly among its members based on their energy usage by chain. With the chain, in a cluster, different node is selected as Agent Node to send the data to cluster-head at different cluster cycle. The new method balances the nodes' power depletion. Simulation results show that it has better power management performance and can prolong the lifetime of the network.