Node Role Selection and Rotation Scheme for Energy Efficiency in Multi-Level IoT-Based Heterogeneous Wireless Sensor Networks (HWSNs)

The emergence of Internet-of-Things (IoT)-based Heterogeneous Wireless Sensor Network (HWSN) technology has become widespread, playing a significant role in the development of di-verse human-centric applications. The role of efficient resource utilisation particularly energy becomes further critical in IoT-based HWSN than was in WSNs. Researchers have proposed nu-merous approaches to either increase the provisioned resources on network devices or to achieve efficient utilisation of these resources during network operations. The application of a vast pro-portion of such methods is either limited to homogeneous networks or to a single parameter and limited level heterogeneity. In this work, we propose a multi-parameter and multi-level hetero-geneity model along with a cluster head rotation method that balances energy and maximizes lifetime. This method achieves up to a 57% increase in throughput to the base station, owing to improved intra-cluster communication in IoT-based HWSN. Furthermore, for inter-cluster com-munication a mathematical framework has been proposed that first assesses whether the sin-gle-hop or multi-hop inter-cluster communication is more energy efficient, and then computes the region where next energy-efficient hop should occur. Finally, a relay role rotation method has been proposed among the potential next-hop nodes. Results confirm that the proposed methods achieve 57.44%, 51.75% and 17.63% increase in throughput of IoT-based HWSN as compared to RLEACH, CRPFCM, and EERPMS respectively.