An improved routing protocol for raw data collection in multihop wireless sensor networks
Yanbin Zhang, Lihua Liu, Mao Wang, Jibing Wu, Hongbin Huang
Abstract
Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are an effective and efficient method for collecting data from a target area, and prolonging the lifetime of WSNs has been a focus of scientific research due to the limited energy of sensor nodes. However, traditional studies of WSNs are based on the assumption that WSNs collect aggregated data with redundant sensor nodes in an ideal radio environment. These assumptions may not be acceptable in practical applications. To address this problem, this paper introduces a novel application scenario for WSNs in which raw data are collected by a multihop network without redundant sensor nodes, and a new hybrid tree-based and cluster-based routing protocol for raw data collection (HTC-RDC) is proposed to prolong the lifetime of WSNs that can work in novel application scenarios. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed HTC-RDC enables the WSNs to achieve their expected functions and prolongs the network lifetime by an average of 11.4% compared to the existing protocols in the explored application scenario.