Research on a Heuristic Searching Algorithm for Energy-aware Routing in Wireless Sensor Networks

Because cluster-head nodes in wireless sensor networks may be far away from the base station, or there exists many obstacles in deployment environments of wireless sensor networks to affect the data transmission performance, they would consume excessive energy in the process of the massive data transmission, which may lead to their earlier death. To solve this problem, a LEACH-A* algorithm is presented in this paper, which utilizes the distance among cluster-head nodes and their corresponding energy and combines with the heuristic searching algorithm to provide the multi-hop communication mode. It can avoid earlier death of some cluster-head nodes, and shift the energy consumption burden from cluster-head nodes to the whole sensor network, thus to prolong the life cycle of the network and improve the transmission quality.