Agent based approach towards energy aware routing in wireless sensor networks

In an environment where node density is massive, placement is heterogeneous and lots of sensory traffic with redundancy is produced; individual nodes waste limited wireless bandwidth and consume lot of energy. This minimizes their life time on the network. To handle such problem number of routing schemes have been proposed by researchers. These schemes tend to find the minimum energy path to prolong the network life. In this paper, we argue that it is not always wise to use the minimum energy path. Nodes along the optimal path will be used rapidly, burn out energy aggressively and eventually die hastily creating communication holes in network. This brings rapid change in the topology resulting in increased latency, poor connectivity and production of heterogeneous subnets. Thus, it is better to occasionally use suboptimal paths. We unmitigated our efforts to augment the node life time in sensor network by frequent use of suboptimal paths, and reducing redundant sensory network traffic. Towards this end, we propose an agent-based directed diffusion approach that incorporates static and mobile agents. Static agent is responsible for calculating and maintaining the set of optimal paths. Mobile agent main function is to perform data processing and make data aggregation decisions at nodes in the network rather than bring data back to a central processor (sink). This paper provides an analytical model for data dissemination for both approaches. To demonstrate the performance evaluation, a prototype of a simulator is implemented.