Energy Efficient Routing in Wireless Sensor Networks using Improved CTNR Protocol
Amit Kumar
Research Scholar, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Sagar Institute of Technology & Management, Barabanki, U.P.
Author
Rajesh Kumar Sharma
Assistant Professor, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Sagar Institute of Technology & Management, Barabanki, U.P.
Author
Dr. J. B. Singh
Professor, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Sagar Institute of Technology & Management, Barabanki, U.P.
Author
📌 DOI: https://doi.org/10.63920/tjths.101026006
🔑 Keywords: wireless sensor networks, energy efficiency, clustering, CTNR, cluster head selection, network lifetime, energy hole.
📅 Publication Date: 16 September 2026
📜 License:
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
- Share — Copy and Redistribute the material
- Adapt — Remix, Transform, and build upon the material
- The licensor cannot revoke these freedoms as long as you follow the license terms.
Abstract:
Energy is the dominant constraint in wireless sensor networks (WSNs), because nodes run on small batteries and are rarely recharged. Cluster-based routing reduces energy use by aggregating data at cluster heads (CHs), yet protocols such as CTNR (Cluster head to Normal Ratio) still suffer from the energy-hole problem: CHs far from the sink spend most of their energy on long-haul transmission. This paper proposes an improved CTNR protocol that inserts two relay tiers between CHs and the base station, namely leader nodes and gateway nodes. CHs are elected from a value function that combines neighbour count, mean squared neighbour distance and distance to the sink, and non-CH nodes with high residual energy become leaders and gateways. Data thus reaches the sink over short hops, which lowers the transmission cost of CHs. MATLAB simulations with 100 nodes over 200 rounds show that, at the final round, the improved protocol keeps 77 nodes alive against 70 for CTNR, reduces dead nodes from 30 to 23, and delivers slightly more packets to the base station.
Download Full PDF Paper
📖 How to Cite
Amit K., Rajesh K. S., J. B. Singh (2026). Energy Efficient Routing in Wireless Sensor Networks using Improved CTNR Protocol. TEJAS J. Technol. Humanit. Sci., Vol. 05, Issue 03. https://doi.org/10.63920/tjths.101026006
📊 Article Metrics
References
[1] I. F. Akyildiz, W. Su, Y. Sankarasubramaniam, and E. Cayirci, “Wireless sensor networks: A survey,” Computer Networks, vol. 38, no. 4, pp. 393–422, 2002.
[2] J. N. Al-Karaki and A. E. Kamal, “Routing techniques in wireless sensor networks: A survey,” IEEE Wireless Communications, vol. 11, no. 6, pp. 6–28, Dec. 2004.
[3] W. R. Heinzelman, A. Chandrakasan, and H. Balakrishnan, “Energy-efficient communication protocol for wireless microsensor networks,” in Proc. 33rd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS), 2000.
[4] W. B. Heinzelman, A. P. Chandrakasan, and H. Balakrishnan, “An application-specific protocol architecture for wireless microsensor networks,” IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, vol. 1, no. 4, pp. 660–670, Oct. 2002.
[5] O. Younis and S. Fahmy, “HEED: A hybrid, energy-efficient, distributed clustering approach for ad hoc sensor networks,” IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing, vol. 3, no. 4, pp. 366–379, Oct.–Dec. 2004.
[6] S. Lindsey and C. S. Raghavendra, “PEGASIS: Power-efficient gathering in sensor information systems,” in Proc. IEEE Aerospace Conference, vol. 3, 2002, pp. 1125–1130.
[7] A. Manjeshwar and D. P. Agrawal, “TEEN: A routing protocol for enhanced efficiency in wireless sensor networks,” in Proc. 15th International Parallel and Distributed Processing Symposium (IPDPS) Workshops, 2001.
[8] G. Smaragdakis, I. Matta, and A. Bestavros, “SEP: A stable election protocol for clustered heterogeneous wireless sensor networks,” in Proc. 2nd International Workshop on Sensor and Actor Network Protocols and Applications (SANPA), 2004.
[9] A. A. Abbasi and M. Younis, “A survey on clustering algorithms for wireless sensor networks,” Computer Communications, vol. 30, nos. 14–15, pp. 2826–2841, 2007.
[10] C. Intanagonwiwat, R. Govindan, D. Estrin, J. Heidemann, and F. Silva, “Directed diffusion for wireless sensor networking,” IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking, vol. 11, no. 1, pp. 2–16, Feb. 2003.
[11] W. Heinzelman, J. Kulik, and H. Balakrishnan, “Adaptive protocols for information dissemination in wireless sensor networks,” in Proc. ACM MobiCom, 1999, pp. 174–185.
[12] Y. Xu, J. Heidemann, and D. Estrin, “Geography-informed energy conservation for ad hoc routing,” in Proc. ACM MobiCom, 2001, pp. 70–84.
[13] C. Li, M. Ye, G. Chen, and J. Wu, “An energy-efficient unequal clustering mechanism for wireless sensor networks,” in Proc. IEEE International Conference on Mobile Ad-hoc and Sensor Systems (MASS), 2005, pp. 604–611.
[14] Z. Pang, W. Zhang, S. Wang, J. Luo, and H. Chen, “Energy-efficient improvements in Mod-LEACH protocol on optimal cluster heads selection,” in Proc. IEEE iThings/GreenCom/CPSCom/SmartData, 2018.
[15] S. El Khediri, R. U. Khan, N. Nasri, and A. Kachouri, “MW-LEACH: Low energy adaptive clustering hierarchy approach for WSN,” IET Wireless Sensor Systems, vol. 10, no. 3, 2020.
[16] M. Ben Salah and A. Boulouz, “Energy efficient clustering based on LEACH,” in Proc. International Conference on Engineering and MIS (ICEMIS), 2016.
[17] S. M. M. H. Daneshvar, P. A. A. Mohajer, and S. M. Mazinani, “Energy-efficient routing in WSN: A centralized cluster-based approach via grey wolf optimizer,” IEEE Access, vol. 7, 2019.
[18] C. Xu, Z. Xiong, G. Zhao, and S. Yu, “An energy-efficient region source routing protocol for lifetime maximization in WSN,” IEEE Access, vol. 7, 2019.
[19] A. A. Hassan, W. M. Shah, A. H. Habeb, and M. F. I. Othman, “An improved energy-efficient clustering protocol to prolong the lifetime of the WSN-based IoT,” IEEE Access, vol. 8, 2020.
[20] X. Li, B. Keegan, F. Mtenzi, T. Weise, and M. Tan, “Energy-efficient load balancing ant-based routing algorithm for wireless sensor networks,” IEEE Access, vol. 7, 2019.