A Novel Load Balanced and Lifetime Maximization Routing Protocol in Wireless Sensor Networks

Balancing energy consumption and prolonging network lifetime are open challenges in Wireless Sensor Networks. In this paper, we design a novel load balanced routing protocol to maximize lifetime of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs). In order to balance the energy consumption among sensor nodes, we deploy multiple sinks simultaneously which are connected though wired or wireless infrastructure. We introduce a potential model and propose a routing scheme in which sensor nodes construct routes based on local topology information and the state information from sinks´ broadcast messages. Sinks monitor their traffic load and adjust their own parameters to balance the traffic load in the network. Theoretical analysis and simulation results show that our protocol can significantly improve the performance of the system in following aspects: robustness, lifetime and reliability.