Energy Optimization in Routing Protocol of IoT Networks Using PSO

Sensor networks consisting of hundreds of thousands of nodes are usually referred to as low-power and lossy networks (LLNs). In these networks, nodes are interconnected by low data-rate lossy links, which have low stability due to low packet delivery rates. Since routing protocols play an important role in the performance of sensor networks, the required protocols must be designed to address energy-related issues. This helps not only to reduce the energy consumption of the overall network but also to evenly distribute the energy load among the network nodes to increase the lifetime of the network. In such networks, the routing protocol for low-power and lossy network (RPL) can minimize the existing issues and improve performance. This paper aims at minimizing energy consumption by specifying the best path in the network for data transmission. To achieve this aim, the particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm is used. This algorithm shows a good convergence for the movement of particles towards the best path and presents the best solution with the maximum number of particles in different particle velocity ranges. The results of this study show that as the number of particles increases, the cost function decreases by 58% on average, and thus, lower energy is required to reach the root. Moreover, with increasing velocity range, the cost function decreases by 43% on average. The proposed algorithm shows a 43% decrease in energy consumption on average.