Fear: A Fuzzy-based Energy-aware Routing Protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks

Many energy-aware routing protocols have been proposed for wireless sensor networks. Most of them are only energy savers and do not take care about energy balancing. The energy saver protocols try to decrease the energy consumption of the network as a whole; however the energy manager protocols balance the energy consumption in the network to avoid network partitioning. This means that energy saver protocols are not necessarily energy balancing and vice versa. However, the lifetime of wireless sensor network is strictly depending on energy consumption; therefore, energy management is an essential task to be considered. This paper proposes an energy aware routing protocol, named FEAR, which considers energy balancing and energy saving. It finds a fair trade-off between energy balancing and energy saving by fuzzy set concept. FEAR routing protocol is simulated and evaluated by Glomosim simulator.