An Energy Balanced Routing Hole and Network Partitioning Mitigation Model for Homogeneous Hierarchical Wireless Sensor Networks

This article addresses the challenges of routing hole and network partitioning often experienced in hierarchical wireless sensor networks (WSNs). This developed model classifies network nodes into sets for effective energy management and formulates two cluster networks namely: switching and non-switching networks. Both networks are considered homogeneous and static WSNs and adopted approaches of residual energy, multi-hop and minimal distance as routing decision parameters. The switching network in addition introduces an energy switching factor as a major decision parameter for the switching of cluster head roles amongst cluster nodes. Network simulation was done using Truetime 2.0 and energy dissipation of the respective nodes and cluster heads was observed against a threshold. Results showed the introduction of the energy switching factor gave a significant energy balancing effect as nodes exhibited uniform energy dissipation. Furthermore, the residual energies for most nodes were above the threshold eliminating the possibility of the presence of routing hole and network partitioning.