Energy-Efficient Routing Protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks Based on Improved Grey Wolf Optimizer

To utilize the energy of sensor nodes efficiently and extend the network lifetime maximally is one of the primary goals in wireless sensor networks (WSNs). Thus, designing an energy-efficient protocol to optimize the determination of cluster heads (CHs) in WSNs has become increasingly important. In this paper, we propose a novel energy-efficient protocol based on an improved Grey Wolf Optimizer (GWO), which we refer to as Fitness value based Improved GWO (FIGWO). It considers a fitness value to improve the finding of the optimal solution in GWO, which ensures a better distribution of CHs and a more balanced cluster structure. According to the distance to the CHs and the BS, sensor nodes' transmission distance are recalculated to reduce the energy consumption. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed approach can prolong the stability period of the network in comparison to other algorithms, namely by 31.5% in comparison to SEP, and even by 57.8% when compared with LEACH protocol. The results also show that the proposed protocol performs well over the above comparative protocols in terms of energy consumption and network throughput.