EERM: Energy Efficient Routing Metric for Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) consists of unattended sensors with limited storage, energy (battery power) and computation and communication capabilities. So, energy efficiency is one of the most important requirements for wireless sensor networks. This paper firstly makes a summary to power control and the existing routing metrics then finds the several key characteristics of wireless sensor networks communication link, secondly EERM is provided which based on power control. Finally, EERM in the paper is adapted to directed diffusion routing protocol. Simulation results show that after the EERM in the paper is used. Reducing the energy consumption in wireless sensor networks and prolongs the network life span. Therefore, our research can give a significant guidance on the optimization of wireless sensor networks.