A Qos-Aware, Hybrid Particle Swarm Optimization-Cuckoo Search Clustering Based Multipath Routing in Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless sensor networks applications have been used in many areas that are difficult to access by humans. However, Routing remains the key challenges in sensor networks as it is important for the timely delivery of sensed datato the base station. In recent years, Multipath Routing has been used to ensure reliable and scalable data transmission in WSN. Although many multipath routing algorithms have been proposed, very few protocols have been focused on the Quality of Service (QoS) based routing. This paper proposes a QoS-aware, multipath routing protocol in which sensor nodes are clustered using the hybrid Particle Swarm Optimization-Cuckoo Search Optimization algorithm. The proposed protocol then chooses multiple stable paths (optimized network routing) using the Cluster Heads to transmit data based on multi-hop communication. Unlike the existing protocols, it relies on paths that do not affect QoS for rapid data transmission. It also extends the network lifetime by changing the Cluster Heads periodically based on the residual energy and uses the optimal number of paths to data transmission unlike the existing QoS Centric protocols. The performance of the proposed protocol is evaluated using NS-2 Simulator in different scenarios. The proposed protocol outperforms current protocols in terms of QoS parameters such as throughput, packet delivery ratio, end-to-end delay, and network lifetime, according to simulation results.