An Energy Efficient Data Gathering Protocol for Heterogeneous Mobile Wireless Sensor Networks

Heterogeneous WSNs (HWSNs) are becoming more attractive because of their capability in fulfilling the real time requirements of emerging applications without much increase in overall cost. However, designing an energy efficient cluster based data gathering protocol for mobile HWSNs requires a sophisticated approach of Cluster Head (CH) selection for balancing the energy utilization, overall network performance and lifetime. In this paper, we consider the use of hierarchical clustering and analyze the effect of multi-levels of energy heterogeneity and connectivity of randomly deployed nodes to design an Energy Efficient Heterogeneous Cluster based Data Gathering Protocol (MHCDP) for Mobile HWSNs, which can improve the data delivery, energy efficiency and lifetime of the network. The proposed weighted CH selection probability makes use of the measure of residual energy, average relative distance and connectivity between nodes and helps to select the most promising node as CH. The results of simulation prove that our proposed MHCDP protocol is more effective in improving the WSN lifetime and minimizes energy consumption when compared to existing protocols.