A Configurable Routing Protocol for Improving Lifetime and Coverage Area in Wireless Sensor Networks

The particularities of Wireless Sensor Networks require specially designedprotocols. Nodes in these networks often possess limited access to energy(usually supplied by batteries), which imposes energy constraints. Additionally,WSNs are commonly deployed in monitoring applications, which may intendto cover large areas. Several techniques have been proposed to improveenergy-balance, coverage area or both at the same time. In this paper, an alternativesolution is presented. It consists of three main components: FuzzyC-Means for network clustering, a cluster head rotation mechanism and asleep scheduling algorithm based on a modified version of Particle SwarmOptimization. Results show that this solution is able to provide a configurablerouting protocol that offers reduced energy consumption, while keeping highcoveragearea.