Genetical Swarm Optimization of Multihop Routes in Wireless Sensor Networks

In recent years, wireless sensor networks have been attracting considerable research attention for a wide range of applications, but they still present significant network communication challenges, involving essentially the use of large numbers of resourceconstrained nodes operating unattended and exposed to potential local failures. In order to maximize the network lifespan, in this paper, genetical swarm optimization (GSO) is applied, a class of hybrid evolutionary techniques developed in order to exploit in the most effective way the uniqueness and peculiarities of two classical optimization approaches; particle swarm optimization (PSO) and genetic algorithms (GA). This procedure is here implemented to optimize the communication energy consumption in a wireless network by selecting the optimal multihop routing schemes, with a suitable hybridization of different routing criteria, confirming itself as a flexible and useful tool for engineering applications.