Wireless sensor nodes are battery powered so there life times are limited. Hence there is need to maximize the overall network life time. The various authors have used different approaches to enhance the network lifetime like by minimization of the energy consumed per packet, bandwidth management, optimizing shortest path, minimizing the cost packet ratio and reduce the energy exhaustion of sensor nodes. In this article, we have used an optimization system for WSNs which is able to applied and optimize the physical distance between two nodes and signal strength between source node (p) to sink node (q) in transmission range. The analysis reported based on ant colony optimization (ACO) meta heuristic method at the network layer routing protocols (data centric) namely directed diffusion protocol, gradient based protocol, energy aware routing protocol and rumor routing protocol. The remaining energy of the nodes has been computed in wireless sensor network area using different parameter. Results show that by using optimization scheme (ACO) give the better performance of directed diffusion protocol as compare to other protocol (gradient based, energy aware routing, and rumor routing) in terms of remaining energy of the node. Link bandwidth has been evaluated considering transmission rate from source node to sink node. The bandwidth of above stated routing protocols has been computed and gradient based protocol is found to be the most efficient among others routing protocol. © 2015, The Society for Reliability Engineering, Quality and Operations Management (SREQOM), India and The Division of Operation and Maintenance, Lulea University of Technology, Sweden.
