KPS: A Fermat Point Based Energy Efficient Data Aggregating Routing Protocol for Multi-sink Wireless Sensor Networks

Lifetime of a multi-sink wireless sensor network (WSN) may increase considerably when data aggregation is introduced in a Fermat point based routing protocol. However, data aggregation should come with a cost of delay in packet forwarding time. It has been seen that increasing the transmission distance could increase the network lifetime. However, our observation shows that after a certain point, lifetime readings of the network would dip for a distance vector type of protocol. Thus, it becomes necessary to choose an appropriate aggregation factor and transmission radius depending upon the requirement of the application for which the WSN has been installed. In this paper we have presented a Fermat point based data aggregating protocol which is distance vector protocol in nature. We have compared its lifetime with some other Fermat point based protocols and studied the effect of aggregation factor on cumulative delay for packet forwarding. Moreover, effect of increased transmission radius on the lifetime of the proposed protocol too was studied.