Abstract: Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are emerging as essential and popular ways of providing pervasive computing environments for various applications. Unbalanced energy consumption is an inherent problem in WSNs, characterized by multi-hop routing and a many-to-one traffic pattern. This uneven energy dissipation can significantly reduce network lifetime. In multi-hop sensor networks, information obtained by the monitoring nodes need to be routed to the sinks, the energy consumption rate per unit information transmission depends on the choice of the next hop node. In an energy-aware routing approach, most proposed algorithms aim at minimizing the total energy consumption or maximizing network lifetime. In this paper, we propose a novel energy aware hierarchical cluster-based (NEAHC) routing protocol with two goals: minimizing the total energy consumption and ensuring fairness of energy consumption between nodes. We model the relay node choosing problem as a nonlinear programming problem and use the property of convex function to find the optimal solution. We also evaluate the proposed algorithm via simulations at the end of this paper.

Key words: WSNs, cluster head election, multihop routing, energy efficiency, network lifetime