AEECC-SEP: Ant-Based Energy Efficient Condensed Cluster Stable Election Protocol in Wireless Sensor Network

The sensor nodes are diffused in a wireless sensor network in the specific geographical region. A heterogeneous WSN involves multiple normal sensor nodes and few advance nodes known as advanced nodes. Advanced node mainly used for data clustering, filtering, transport, and fusion is more expensive and capable than the normal node. In this paper, an energy efficient condensed cluster protocol is proposed in which the data routing is based on the ant colony optimization algorithm. In SEP, the formation of clusters is random and entirely based on threshold values; however, in this protocol attempt has been made to lower the number of clusters by combining the adjacent clusters. Therefore, only one cluster is formed within a specific geographical region, which helps to resolve the redundancy over that region. In this paper, efforts have been made to reduce the cluster-heads to prevent the redundancy along with the use of ant colony optimization-based routing to select the optimal routing path. This protocol is proposed to increase the stability period and decrease the instability period along with improved energy efficiency and network lifetime. Simulation results depict that the suggested protocol offers higher energy efficiency, prolonged stability period, and low instability period as compared to SEP and LEACH protocols.