A Color-theory-based Energy Efficient Routing Algorithm for Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) with nodes spreading in a target area have abilities of sensing, computing, and communication. We adopted a range-free Color-theory based Dynamic Localization, CDL[1] [1][1], to help identify each sensor node’s location. Since sensor nodes are battery-powered, we propose a Color-theory-based Energy Efficient Routing (CEER) algorithm to prolong the life time of each sensor node. Each anchor will broadcast its RGB values to each sensor node, including cluster heads. A sensor node will periodically forward its RGB values along with sensed data (if available) to its associated cluster head. The cluster head will then forward the aggregated data to a nearby anchor. The uniqueness of our approach is that by comparing the associated RGB values among neighboring nodes, we can efficiently choose a better routing path with energy awareness and there is no topology hole problem. Simulation results have shown that our routing algorithm can save 50% 60% energy than ESDSR [2] in mobile WSNs. In addition, the latency per packet of CEER is 50% less than that of ESDSR. Our routing algorithm is feasible for WSN applications, such as community health care systems