Extending the lifetime of wireless sensor networks through mitigating the hot spot problem.

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are used to retrieve information in hostile environments that are not always accessible to human beings. Once they are deployed, the sensors are considered autonomous. Their lifetime is equivalent to the lifetime of their battery. The energy factor is the center of all the concerns of the sensors: economic routing protocols, adapted wireless technology, etc. Energy costs must be minimized because energy is a key constraint in sensor networks. This paper is part of the study of the routing problem in WSNs. Indeed, the problem consists of the nodes located around the base station (BS), which transmit data to other nodes, their energy is depleted more quickly. This causes energy holes and areas called hot spot. To address this problem, we used the unequal clustering mechanism in order to solve the network hot spot problem. Clusters closer to the BS have smaller sizes than those farther from the BS to overcome the energy over-consumption around the BS. The evaluation of our solution will be carried out using the platform Omnet++/Castalia. The simulation results obtained allow a glimpse of the energy gained by the proposed protocol compared to the protocol Eeuc. Energy efficiency is achieved thanks to the use of a network management policy which enables to balance the energy levels of different nodes, consequently, extends the lifetime of the network. • The hierarchical architecture in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) has been widely adopted. • A new routing algorithm Multi Hop based Competition Radius is developed aiming to increase the WSN's life time. • Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm presents efficient results in terms of network lifetime, Latency and energy consumption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]