Energy-Efficient Hybrid Routing Protocol for IoT Communication Systems in 5G and Beyond

• Main Authors: Mohammad Baniata, Haftu Tasew Reda, Naveen Chilamkurti, Alsharif Abuadbba
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2021-01-01
• Series: Sensors
• Subjects: wireless sensor network; Internet of Things; energy efficiency; routing protocol; 5G communication
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/1424-8220/21/2/537

One of the major concerns in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) is most of the sensor nodes are powered through limited lifetime of energy-constrained batteries, which majorly affects the performance, quality, and lifetime of the network. Therefore, diverse clustering methods are proposed to improve energy efficiency of the WSNs. In the meantime, fifth-generation (5G) communications require that several Internet of Things (IoT) applications need to adopt the use of multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) antenna systems to provide an improved capacity over multi-path channel environment. In this paper, we study a clustering technique for MIMO-based IoT communication systems to achieve energy efficiency. In particular, a novel MIMO-based energy-efficient unequal hybrid clustering (MIMO-HC) protocol is proposed for applications on the IoT in the 5G environment and beyond. Experimental analysis is conducted to assess the effectiveness of the suggested MIMO-HC protocol and compared with existing state-of-the-art research. The proposed MIMO-HC scheme achieves less energy consumption and better network lifetime compared to existing techniques. Specifically, the proposed MIMO-HC improves the network lifetime by approximately <inline-formula><math display="inline"><semantics><mrow><mn>3</mn><mo>×</mo></mrow></semantics></math></inline-formula> as long as the first node and the final node dies as compared with the existing protocol. Moreover, the energy that cluster heads consume on the proposed MIMO-HC is 40% less than that expended in the existing protocol.