Routing and Determining the Modulation Level of Nodes in Dynamic Modulation Scaling-Enabled WSNs using Genetic Algorithm

A critical issue in designing Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) is to prolong their lifetime considering the limited energy resources of the nodes. One approach to mitigate this problem is to apply Dynamic Modulation Scaling (DMS) technique. By adjusting the modulation level of the nodes, the amount of energy exhausted and the required time for data transmission are balanced. Accordingly, the energy consumption throughout the network reduces substantially. The routing problem should be considered along with modulation level adjustment to enhance performance. The existing DMS-based algorithms either did not concern the routing problem or proposed greedy and low-quality solutions. Hence, we propose an effective algorithm which comprises two phases, namely routing and determining the modulation level of nodes. The proposed scheme exploits genetic algorithm to improve performance. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm improves the average exhausted energy by sensors, the standard deviation of consumed energy by sensors, and the network lifetime, by 72%, 88%, and 112%, respectively.