A Hybrid Multi-Hop Clustering and Energy-Aware Routing Protocol for Efficient Resource Management in Renewable Energy Harvesting Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract

Energy Harvesting Wireless Sensor Networks (EH-WSNs) main goal is to increase efficiency in settings where Energy Harvesting (EH) is restricted by environmental resources. To solve the drawbacks of conventional Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) routing methods that usually ignore EH, this work presents a multi-hop clustering and renewable energy-based routing protocol designed for EH-WSNs. The suggested method performs clustering both centralized and decentralized using energy circumstances and the quantity of captured energy. The protocol operates in three phases: cluster formation, data transmission, and centralized management. To evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed approach, we analyze three distinct scenarios with different settings. The findings show that the suggested approach greatly lowers the total network energy usage while allowing a higher number of nodes to stay operational. We find that our approach outperforms AEHAC, CRBS, HUCL, and EADUC in terms of average energy levels, overall efficiency, network stability, and number of live nodes during the simulation. The results taken together show that the suggested method continuously improves network efficiency and stability in all assessed situations.