Energy balanced position-based routing for lifetime maximization of wireless sensor networks

Maximizing the network lifetime is the fundamental design issue in wireless sensor networks (WSNs). The existing routing algorithms DIR, MFR, GEDIR, and Dijkstra's algorithms select the same set of sensors for a source-destination pair for packet transmission that results in an early dead situation of the sensors, leading to the partition in the networks. In this paper, we present a new position based routing algorithm to fairly use the energy of the sensors to maximize the network lifetime. The forwarding search space (FSS) is introduced to control unnecessary transmissions. A next forwarder selection function is designed based on the residual energy, node degree, distance, and angle. Each time, this function selects different set of sensors for packets transmission, which is the essence of fairly balance the energy consumption among the sensors. Further, the mathematical expression for connectivity probability, expected one hop distance, expected distance between source and destination node, expected hop count, and expected energy consumption are derived. The simulation results are given to validate the analytical results. The experimental results show the proposed algorithm outperforms the state of the art routing algorithms in terms of network lifetime.