An Energy Efficient Routing Protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks using A-star Algorithm

Sensors are regarded as significant components of electronic devices. In most applications of wireless sensor networks (WSNs), important and critical information must be delivered to the sink in a multi-hop and energy-efficient manner. Inasmuch as the energy of sensor nodes is limited, prolonging network lifetime in WSNs is considered to be a critical issue. In order to extend the network lifetime, researchers should consider energy consumption in routing protocols of WSNs. In this paper, a new energy-efficient routing protocol (EERP) has been proposed for WSNs using A-star algorithm. The proposed routing scheme improves the network lifetime by forwarding data packets via the optimal shortest path. The optimal path can be discovered with regard to the maximum residual energy of the next hop sensor node, high link quality, buffer occupancy and minimum hop counts. Simulation results indicate that the proposed scheme improves network lifetime in comparison with A-star and fuzzy logic(A&F) protocol.