Genetic Algorithm Based Approach for Extending the Lifetime of Two-Tiered Sensor Networks

In the past few years, the use of higher power relay nodes as cluster heads in two-tiered sensor networks have been proposed, to achieve various objectives including improved network lifetime. These relay nodes may form a network among themselves and route data towards the base station. In such a model, the lifetime of the network is determined mainly by the lifetime of these relay nodes, which, in turn, is directly affected by the data communication scheme. In this paper, we have proposed a genetic algorithm (GA) based solution for scheduling the data gathering of relay nodes that can significantly extend the lifetime of the relay node network. For smaller networks, where the global optimum can be determined, our GA based approach is always able to find the optimal solution. For larger networks, we have compared our approach with traditional routing schemes and shown that our method leads to significant improvements