Energy Efficient Data Gathering Schemes in Wireless Sensor Networks Using Ant Colony Optimization

Wireless sensor nodes are highly energy constrainedand hence formulating energy-efficient protocols in order toenhance network lifetime and performance are of utmostimportance in wireless sensor networks. A few solutions exist tothe problem, LEACH and PEGASIS protocols being the mostelegant ones. Both schemes try to achieve a solution byminimizing the overall energy dissipation by the nodes in thenetwork. While randomizing cluster heads for achieving equalenergy dissipation has been done in the LEACH protocol, thePEGASIS protocol forms a chain of all the nodes in thenetwork, each node taking rounds in transmitting to the basestation. In this paper we propose energy efficient protocolswhich enhance the performance of LEACH, PEGASIS. Theindividual nodes being deployed randomly in the play field thebase station is located at variable distances from them. Hence itis clear that the nodes would actually dissipate a differentamount of energy during their turn of transmission to the basestation. The inter-nodal distance also being variable it too playsa role in unequal energy dissipation of the nodes. This energydifference between the various nodes keeps on increasingresulting in poorer network performance. In our schemes we tryto nullify the differences occurring due to these abovementioned causes and thus increase the network performanceby balancing the energy dissipation by the nodes. We alsoemploy the Ant Colony Optimization algorithm (ACO) for chainconstruction instead of the greedy algorithm to enhance thenetwork performance. Extensive simulations have been carriedout which show significant improvement over PEGASIS whichin turn implies substantial increment over LEACH