Particle swarm optimization based energy efficient clustering and sink mobility in heterogeneous wireless sensor network

•PSO based Energy efficient clustering method with sink mobility is presented for wireless sensor network.•A comprehensive discussion on related work with research gaps are presented systematically.•The PSO is discussed for optimizing different factors used for cluster head (CH).•The proposed algorithm is discussed in detailed manner.•Rigorous simulations and analysis are presented.•Results are validated against the state-of-the-art methods. In a WSN, sensor node plays a significant role. Working of sensor node depends upon its battery's life. Replacements of batteries are found infeasible once they are deployed in a remote or unattended area. Plethora of research had been conducted to address this challenge, but they suffer one or the other way. In this paper, a particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm integrated with an energy efficient clustering and sink mobility ((PSO-ECSM) is proposed to deal with both cluster head selection problem and sink mobility problem. Extensive computer simulations are conducted to determine the performance of the PSO-ECSM. Five factors such as residual energy, distance, node degree, average energy and energy consumption rate (ECR) are considered for CH selection. An optimum value of these factors is determined through PSO-ECSM algorithm. Further, PSO-ECSM addresses the concern of relaying the data traffic in a multi-hop network by introducing sink mobility. PSO-ECSM's performances are tested against the state-of-the-art algorithms considering five performance metrics (stability period, network, longevity, number of dead nodes against rounds, throughput and network's remaining energy). Statistical tests are conducted to determine the significance of the performance. Simulation results show that the PSO-ECSM improves stability period, half node dead, network lifetime and throughput vis-à-vis ICRPSO by 24.8%, 31.7%, 9.8 %, and 12.2%, respectively.