Energy efficient fuzzy logic prediction-based opportunistic routing protocol (EEFLPOR) for wireless sensor networks

Opportunistic routing (OR) is a new paradigm for wireless sensor networks (WSNs) that improves the energy efficiency and network lifetime by choosing the optimal relay node from the set of capable forwarding nodes. The existing energy-efficient OR protocols generally follow two important steps: (i) selecting a potential forwarder set and (ii) prioritizing the relay node, using the current network parameter values of the sensor nodes. Introducing the prediction model in this OR opportunistic routing helps to predict the future network parameter values which enhance the network lifetime and throughput compared to the existing OR protocols. Therefore, an energy-efficient fuzzy logic prediction-based opportunistic routing protocol (EEFLPOR) is proposed here with a fuzzy-based prediction method using the current and future node parameters viz., number of transactions of a node, link quality, residual energy, and the distance to the sink to predict the better relay node. The proposed EEFLPOR is thoroughly analyzed by simulation using the NS-3.25 simulator for standard evaluation parameters, and it shows better performance compared with other benchmark OR protocols.