MAP: A Balanced Energy Consumption Routing Protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks

Network lifetime is a critical issue in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs). In which, a large number of sensor nodes communicate together to perform a predetermined sensing task. In such networks, the network life time depends mainly on the lifetime of the sensor nodes constituting the network. Therefore, it is essential to balance the energy consumption among all sensor nodes to ensure the network connectivity. In this paper, we propose an energy-efficient data routing protocol for wireless sensor networks. Contrary to the protocol proposed in [6], that always selects the path with minimum hop count to the base station, our proposed routing protocol may choose a longer path that will provide better distribution of the energy consumption among the sensor nodes. Simulation results indicate clearly that compared to the routing protocol proposed in [6], our proposed protocol evenly distributes the energy consumption among the network nodes thus maximizing the network life time. Keywords—Wireless Sensor Network(WSN), Energy Efficient Routing