Proposing an Energy-Aware Routing Protocol by Using Fish Swarm Optimization Algorithm in WSN (Wireless Sensor Networks)

Former developments and advances in micro-electro-mechanical systems have made it possible to produce and use tiny battery-powered nodes in wireless communications. Networks consisting of such nodes which are capable of measurement are called Wireless sensor networks (WSNs). The initial objective of using nodes was related to internal applications. The initial nodes are able to sense scalar information such as temperature, moisture, pressure and the location of surrounding objects. However, sensor nodes’ power is provided by battery with limited capacity. Hence, due to limited resources, a balance should be made between precision and power optimization in these networks. In this paper, a new method is proposed which addresses the issue of optimal power consumption in WSNs. Accordingly, using fish swarm optimization algorithm, we proposed an energy-aware routing protocol in WSNs which optimizes power consumption. The proposed protocol was simulated in OPNET 11.5 simulator and compared with ERA protocol. Simulation results indicated that the proposed protocol had better performance than ERA protocol regarding power consumption, end-to-end delay, media access delay, throughput rate, the probability of successful transmission to sink and signal to noise ratio.