An adaptive routing strategy for cluster-based wireless sensor networks

Dynamic clustering provides a scalable and energy efficient solution for data transmission in wireless sensor networks. Observing the fact that the cluster reorganization can not solve the problem of imbalanced energy consumption in the inter-cluster communication, we propose an adaptive routing strategy for cluster-based wireless sensor networks (ARC). The goal of ARC is to balance the energy consumption of nodes by adaptively controlling the modes of inter-cluster routing. In ARC, an adaptive energy threshold and a tunable cost function are designed for cluster heads to make routing decisions. Simulation results demonstrate that ARC effectively balances the energy consumption in the inter-cluster communication, and hence improves the energy efficiency and prolongs the network lifetime.