Energy Optimization With Higher Information Quality for SHM Application in Wireless Sensor Networks

Energy is an important resource in wireless sensor nodes which gets depleted soon, especially in harsh environments, where the sensor's batteries once deployed cannot be reached easily for replacement or recharging activities. Therefore, designing energy-efficient routing protocol for wireless sensor networks is the objective for the applications like structural health monitoring (SHM), military surveillance, and so on. In this paper, energy optimization is performed by the clustering technique. In clustering, the energy harvesting sensor nodes, which are close to the sink and having a higher probability of energy arrival rate, are elected as cluster head nodes. The remaining nonelected node reserves a portion of their harvested energy to be used by them when they are elected as cluster heads. Thus, utilizing this reserved harvested energy, the cluster head nodes can survive longer. Routing the data from cluster head nodes to the sink is done with the shortest path available. Also, sensor node placement optimization is important in SHM applications, as if the desired information quality is achieved with less number of sensor nodes, then it is a cost-effective method. Thus, using the exhaustive search method, the sensor node location optimization is performed in the study presented in this paper.