An Energy Efficient Routing Protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks Based on Two Relay Nodes

Abstract

Uses of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) in various fields have made it more demanding. One should efficiently manage battery operated sensor nodes, in order to attain longer life of these networks having finite amount of energy. Among different modes of communication Multi-hop mode is more feasible for these types of networks being not transmitting sensed information to sink directly because of node‟s short range of transmission. Still “Hot Spots” issue arises with this type of communication, as it may leads to several problems like reduces the network operating time and imbalance utilization of energy. While carrying data to BS from other clusters, Cluster Heads (CHs) nearer to Base Station (BS) tend to consume their energy earlier but still their cluster members have sufficient amount of energy. Dissipation of energy is faster even in single hop method, when the distance between Cluster Heads and BS is larger. This thing results to minimize the network‟s stability period. Stability is the functional time of the network until the first node becomes nonfunctional. This paper provides/presents a protocol for clustered heterogeneous network “Energy Efficient Two Relay Node Routing Protocol (EETRNRP)”. For communication in the cluster and between different cluster, two high energy relay nodes are used with sensor nodes per cluster. The simulation results prove that EETRNRP provides efficient usage of node‟s available energy and thus prolongs the stability and functional time of the network compared to Stable Election Protocol (SEP).