Design and optimization of a cross-layer routing protocol for multi-hop wireless sensor networks

How to extend lifetime of wireless sensor networks (WSNs) is still an open issue for researchers. In past years, there are two main methods were developed for improving the lifetime of WSNs: One is to equalize energy consumption of networks, and another is to improve energy efficiency of nodes in networks. In this paper, the authors proposed a multi-hop routing protocol based on the LAR algorithm and cross-layer mechanism. In the proposal, the information both a node´s residual energy and the distance from it to the next hop node are considered with different equilibrium weight factors. The results of analyzing and stimulating show that our proposal is efficiently both on equalizing the nodes energy consumption and reducing the network packet loss rate. Also, the lifetime of networks has been prolonger than LAR.