Dynamic multi-hop routing protocol for unbalanced sized clusters in wireless sensor networks

Wireless sensor networks is a rapidly emerging technology implemented in various applications for several domains. One of the important considerations in wireless sensor networks is the network lifetime because the sensor nodes are battery powered and difficult to replace or recharge when they are deployed in dangerous or inaccessible environments. Various node clustering approaches have been implemented to achieve energy efficiency in order to prolong the network lifetime. However, the approaches are only suitable for a certain application scope. The data similarity aware node clustering is a specific application that does not consider load balancing of clusters, so that it also requires a proper routing protocol. The main challenge in such clustering approach is that some nodes are far apart from other nodes and the network structure change dynamically. Therefore, it is required a dynamic multi hop routing protocol to address the problem. In this work, we propose a dynamic multi-hop routing protocol based on the rules incorporating fuzzy system and particle swarm optimization to obtain the priority factor of cluster head election. Our proposed Dynamic Multi-Hop Routing for Unbalanced Sized Cluster (DMHR-USC) protocol was compared against the K-hop Clustering Algorithm (KHOPCA) protocol to justify the performance. The DMHR-USC can reach the network lifetime longer than the KHOPCA in all terms of the First Node Dies (FND), Half of Nodes have Dead (HND), and the Last Node Dies (LND). Therefore, the DMHR-USC can prolong the network lifetime in a relative significant manner.