Dynamic weight based Hierarchical Routing Protocol in Wireless Sensor Networks

In order to prolong the lifetime and reduce the transmission delay of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs), we propose a novel Hierarchical Routing Protocol based on Dynamic Weight (HRPDW) for WSNs. In our HRPDW, first considering the important parameters of both residual energy and transmission delay, we set the dynamic weight; second, every sensor node stores the dynamic weights of its several adjacent nodes, within the scope of single or two hops, into its neighboring list. Finally, according to the values of dynamic weights in the neighboring list, the sensor node decides the next-hop forwarding path. The simulation results demonstrated that our HRPDW not only achieves energy consumption balancing efficiently, but also obtains both longer network lifetime and shorter transmission delay comparing with the ZigBee method. The improvement ratios of network lifetime and transmission delay are up to around 33% and 24%, respectively.