A new energy-efficient and temperature-aware routing protocol based on fuzzy logic for multi-WBANs

Temperature-aware routing of the sensed data is one of the significant challenges in Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs). This article presents a novel fuzzy logic-based and thermal-aware clustering and routing scheme for multi-WBANs that attempts to cluster similar sensors together and benefits from data aggregation. In this scheme, a Fuzzy Logic Controller (FLC) is applied for clustering that receives essential factors such as the temperature of CH, number of similar neighbors, number of neighbors, remaining energy, and path loss. Besides, in this scheme, the CHs can send their data to the coordinator of the other patients, and to do this, another FLC is presented, which receives crisp parameters such as the number of patients connected to the coordinator, packet delivery ratio, and distance. To improve the effectiveness of these FLCs, a new hybrid metaheuristic algorithm, named HAOA, is presented that tunes the FLCs’ parameters and reasoning rules. The HAOA algorithm was created by improving and combining the exploration and exploitation phases of the Aquila optimizer algorithm with the AOA algorithms, aiming to mitigate the local optima problem in AOA and its convergence speed. Extensive simulations were conducted in several realistic scenarios, and their results indicate that the proposed temperature-based clustering and routing method can prevent hotspot problems in WBAN while improving its stability and lifetime.