ROOT: Energy Efficient Routing through Optimized Tree in Sensor Networks

Due to limitation of battery power, wireless sensor nodes are highly energy constrained. So, to enhance the network lifetime, the protocols which are used in wireless sensor network should be energy efficient. The LEACH and PEGASIS protocols which are elegant solutions to this problem try to minimize the overall energy dissipation by the nodes in the network. While the LEACH protocol randomizes cluster heads to achieve equal energy dissemination, the PEGASIS protocol forms a chain of cluster heads taking rounds in transmitting to the base station. In this paper we propose an energy efficient protocol which combines and thus enhances the performance of LEACH and PEGASIS. Here the base station is located at variable distances from each node due to the random deployment of the sensor nodes. So, each node actually dissipates a different amount of energy during its turn of transmission to the base station. This energy difference between the various nodes keeps on increasing with resulting in poorer network performance. In this paper we have introduced ROOT – routing through optimized tree formation. In our scheme we have contrived an optimized solution based on minimum cost spanning tree using greedy algorithm to gather the data. This optimized solution is developed taking into account the distances between the nodes & the energy dissipation by each node. This tree based solution tries to achieve its goal towards equalizing energy dissipation by each node which results in better performance as compared to LEACH and PEGASIS. Extensive simulations have been carried out which shows that significant improvement over these schemes. KeywordsWireless sensor networks, data gathering cycle, network lifetime.