Energy-aware disjoint dominating sets-based whale optimization algorithm for data collection in WSNs

One of the major challenges in realizing a reliable wireless sensor network (WSN) that can survive under the emerging applications is the constrained energy of the sensors. Hence, extending the lifetime of WSN is a major concern, which directly impacts the performance of various WSN-based applications. In this regard, various methods have been developed that either investigate the energy consumption or lifetime enhancement of WSN. A promising method to conserve the energy of the sensors is to use sleep–awake scheduling by choosing disjoint groups of nodes called dominating set (DS). By distributing the data collection duties among these DSs, one DS handles these tasks for a specified period of time before being replaced by another group, extending the lifespan of the network. This problem becomes challenging in WSN with heterogeneous energy. Despite the success of the algorithms in determining the DS, none of the existing methods consider the node’s energy while creation or selection of DS. This motivates us to utilize the DSs concept to control and maintain sleep/awake schedule of WSN nodes with heterogeneous energy. Toward this goal, we propose an energy-aware algorithm known as proposed initializer for whale optimization algorithm-based operator (PI-WOA-BO) to construct disjoint DSs that work as collector nodes for data gathering in each round and extend the total WSN lifetime. An energy-aware fitness function is introduced for selecting the best DSs that can maximize the WSN lifetime. Simulation results reveal that PI-WOA-BO exhibits enhanced performance over baseline techniques under various metrics including energy, stability, reliability and lifetime of WSN. PI-WOA-BO outperforms FUZZY-DS-ACO, CDS-FOR, BEE-VBC and CDS-LEACH by (17.4%, 40.1%, 31.1% and 53.6%), (7.7%, 33.5%, 23.4% and 48.5%) and (7.9%, 33.5%, 22.9% and 47.8%) in terms of First, Half and Last node dies, respectively.