A novelistic approach for energy efficient routing using single and multiple data sinks in heterogeneous wireless sensor network

In this paper, Improved Dual Hop Routing protocol (IDHR) and Multiple data sink-based Energy Efficient Cluster-based routing protocol (MEEC) are proposed. The Cluster Head (CH) selection in IDHR and MEEC is done by incorporating node density parameter along with other parameters, namely energy and distance between the node and the sink. In MEEC, multiple data sinks are employed to pact with the burden on the relaying nodes involved in data forwarding. The node density factor proves to be adherent for energy preservation of nodes by abating the average communication distance between the nodes and respective CH. The employment of multiple data sinks in MEEC avoids any dual hop communication between CHs and sink, which in turn alleviates hot-spot problem and ameliorates network longevity. As evident from the simulation results, IDHR and MEEC individually outperform competitive protocols, namely SEECP, DRESEP and TEDRP with respect to various performance metrics. Furthermore, the performance comparison of MEEC and IDHR is investigated to limelight the essence of employing multiple data sinks for a network.