Energy-Efficient Mobile Data Ferry Pathway Construction Protocol Based on Transmission Coverage and Hybrid Differential Search Algorithm in Wireless Sensor Networks

Energy efficiency and energy hole phenomena are still dominant issues in wireless sensor networks. Based on recent studies, mobile data ferry could be a powerful approach to address these vital issues. Determination of sojourn points and efficient pathway design is vital in this approach. However, mobile data ferry visits to specific nodes make a long tour distance. Moreover, improper sojourn points affect to energy consumption. This paper proposes an energy-efficient mobile data ferry pathway construction protocol (EEMDFPC) based on transmission coverage and a hybrid differential search algorithm (DSA). EEMDFPC establishes non-overlapping clusters and selects the optimal CHs by adopting hybrid DSA. Hybrid DSA is an improvement of DSA by employing particle swarm optimization (PSO) and chaotic map. Moreover, the proposed protocol discovers the sojourn points based on the full coverage area and the intersection area between CHs in a minimum number. Next, hybrid DSA with swap strategic constructs mobile data ferries route. Performance evaluation of the proposed protocol was carried out in a simulated environment and compared with the MSEAC-4R and MSEAC-8R protocols. The evaluation results show that the proposed protocol can extend the network lifetime compared to MSEAC-4R, MSEAC-8R, and LEACH_CD are 15.08%-25.63%, 7.72%- 17.76%, and 10.41%-29.44% respectively. The proposed protocol can also prolong the stability compared to MSEAC-4R and MSEAC-8R, namely 643-1025, 621-965 rounds, and 18-546 rounds, respectively. The superior performance of the proposed protocol proves that the proposed protocol operates efficiently and reduces the energy hole problem.