Energy-Efficient Cluster-Based Wireless Sensor Networks Using Adaptive Modulation: Performance Analysis

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) play a vital role in modern technology since they have recently emerged into enormous essential applications of the Internet of Things (IoT). However, WSNs encounter a shortage in the lifetime due to limitations in the power supply. Accordingly, many solutions are reported in literature to deal with energy saving problem in the WSNs. In this paper, a novel method is presented to minimize energy consumption using adaptive modulation that is jointly integrated with clustering technique . This method is considered as a promising solution for dense and sparse cluster-based WSNs to improve energy efficiency. In the suggested solution, the adaptive modulation is implemented in the communication link between cluster members (CMs) and cluster head (CH). Besides, distance-based adaptive modulation step function is proposed in which the optimum modulation order is selected to achieve the minimum energy consumption between CMs and CH. The proposed method is evaluated extensively in order to investigate the impact of adaptive modulation in cluster-based WSNs using M-ary Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (MQAM) system. The performance evaluation addresses both energy consumption and throughput by using two metrics: cluster density, and cluster size. Regarding simulation results, by varying cluster density and cluster size, the adaptive modulation shows significant saving in energy consumption where it constitutes a lower bound for energy consumption. Also, it shows a great impact on throughput where it constitutes an upper bound for the throughput. Moreover, the adaptive modulation shows a considerable leverage on energy saving for small number of clusters, conversely, the energy saving decreases as the number of clusters increase. Finally, it is concluded that these findings can provide a remarkable guidance for designing an energy efficient WSNs.