An annulus sector grid aided energy-efficient multi-hop routing protocol for wireless sensor networks

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) consist of a large number of sensor nodes which usually have very limited energy and are deployed in the wild environment. The batteries of the nodes cannot be recharged or replaced. Therefore, it is necessary to design energy-efficient routing protocols to maximize the network lifetime. This paper proposes an annulus sector grid aided routing protocol (ASGRP) which uses an annulus sector grid clustering method to improve WSNs’ energy efficiency and prolong the network lifetime. The annulus sector grid clustering method based on arithmetic progression is presented to divide the network area into clusters with various sizes. From the base station (BS) outwards, the network area is divided into different levels with incremental equal difference distance. This paper also presents an inter-level multi-hop routing algorithm to improve the energy efficiency of data transmission between the BS and cluster head (CH) nodes. The algorithm combines the communication management (CM) nodes with CH nodes to establish routes to transmit data. Simulation results show that compared with multi-hop EEBCDA, EEMRP and CAMP, ASGRP prolongs the network lifetime by 24.36–70.68% in the 200 m × 200 m network and 25.47–90.34% in the 400 m × 400 m network. The proposed protocol significantly reduces the energy consumption of each round and has better performance of energy balance and efficiency in the larger network area.