An Density-based Energy-efficient Routing Algorithm in Wireless Sensor Networks Using Game Theory

Clustering is an efficient technique that is widely adopted in wireless sensor networks. It divides network into clusters and let cluster heads be responsible for forwarding aggregated data to the sink. With energy efficiency in account, the conflict between an individual node and the entire network remains to be solved. In this paper, we propose a Density-based Energy-efficient Game-theoretic Routing Algorithm (DEGRA). As a clustering algorithm, DEGRA adopts game theory and set a utility function based on the nodes’ density, residual energy and average energy consumption of its neighboring nodes. Cluster heads are iteratively selected. We also design the intra-cluster and multi-hop inter-cluster routing algorithms. Simulation results show that cluster heads are evenly distributed and our proposed routing algorithm do consume much less energy than algorithms such as LEACH and DEER. The network lifetime is also largely prolonged.