A game theory based energy efficient clustering routing protocol for WSNs

The energy constraint is one of the inherent defects of the Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs). How to prolong the lifespan of the network has attracted more and more attention. Numerous achievements have emerged successively recently. Among these mechanisms designing routing protocols is one of the most promising ones owing to the large amount of energy consumed for data transmission. The background and related works are described firstly in detail in this paper. Then a game model for selecting the Cluster Head is presented. Subsequently, a novel routing protocol named Game theory based Energy Efficient Clustering routing protocol (GEEC) is proposed. GEEC, which belongs to a kind of clustering routing protocols, adopts evolutionary game theory mechanism to achieve energy exhaust equilibrium as well as lifetime extension at the same time. Finally, extensive simulation experiments are conducted. The experimental results indicate that a significant improvement in energy balance as well as in energy conservation compared with other two kinds of well-known clustering routing protocols is achieved.