An Energy Efficient Clustering Method using Bat Algorithm and Mobile Sink in Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) consist of sensor nodes with limited energy. Energy efficiency is an important issue in WSNs as the sensor nodes are deployed in rugged and non-care areas and consume a lot of energy to send data to the central station or sink if they want to communicate directly with the sink. Recently, the IEEE 802.15.4 protocol is employed as a low-power, low-cost, and low rate communication standard for WSNs, which ensures real-time applications via Guaranteed Time Slot (GTS). Accordingly, in this paper, a new protocol energy efficient bat algorithm and a mobile sink are presented. It can choose the optimal route based on: (1) distance of a sensor node to sink, (2), bat loudness, and (3) energy level of its battery. Using the OPNET simulator version 11.5, the proposed method was simulated by bat and NODIC protocols, and IEEE 802.15.4 and the results were considered in terms of energy consumption, end to end delay, signal to noise ratio, the success probability of sending data to sink and rate of passing data. The results of the simulation showed the use of the above-mentioned parameters in the proposed method leads to the improvement of the network throughput against using the IEEE 802.15.4 protocol, Bat algorithm, and NODIC protocol.