Implementation of Efficient Intra- and Inter-Zone Routing for Extending Network Consistency in Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless sensor network (WSN) consists of a large amount of limited battery-powered sensor nodes. In general, energy consumption will be a significant concern for WSN owing to irreplaceable battery constraints of sensor nodes. The zone formation approach could be an adequate data aggregation technique which efficiently minimizes the energy consumption by categorizing sensor nodes into zones. However, the main constraints like zone head (ZH) selection, frequent change of ZH, and multi-hop communication from ZH to the sink have a direct impact on the network consistency of WSN. In this paper, a novel efficient intra- and inter-zone routing scheme has been proposed in order to prolong the network consistency of WSN. In the proposed scheme, the hybrid algorithm is established in which harmony search algorithm incorporates with modified moth flame optimization algorithm. This hybrid algorithm provides the appropriate ZH selection for intra-zone routing that reduces the frequent change of ZH in the network. Furthermore, the path balancing in inter-zone routing is acquired through multi-criteria-based optimal path routing algorithm. The performance results confirm that the proposed scheme enhances the network consistency compared with an existing scheme.