An online energy-efficient routing protocol with traffic load prospects in wireless sensor networks

In wireless sensor networks, many routing algorithms are designed to implement energy-efficient mechanisms. Among those, some focus on maximising an important performance index called network lifetime, which is the number of messages successfully delivered in the network before a failure. In this paper, we propose a new online algorithm taking the goal of prolonging network lifetime. When making routing decisions, our algorithm, named Traffic-Aware Energy Efficient (TAEE) routing protocol, utilises prospective traffic load information for further load balance, in addition to power-related metrics used in an enhanced cost function in calculating least cost paths. An algorithm for automatic parameter adaption is also described. To better accommodate to large-scale sensor networks, we further introduce a random grouping scheme which enables hierarchical TAEE routing to run within and cross the dynamically formed groups to reduce computation and routing overhead, while maintaining global energy efficiency. Our simulation shows that compared with the leading power-aware Max-min zPmin protocol, the TAEE protocol generates better performance in terms of network lifetime without jeopardising network capacity.