An energy efficiency routing protocol for UAV-aided WSNs data collection

In recent years, Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV)-aided Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) have become a hot research topic. The routing protocol is a crucial technology for data transmission in UAV-WSNs. In this paper, we propose an efficient routing protocol for UAV-WSNs data collection to address the high energy consumption and premature death of some sensor nodes (SNs) caused by existing routing protocols. Firstly, the UAV-WSNs data collection framework is established, and a UAV communication coverage model is derived. Secondly, according to the data transmission link, we preliminarily divide the routing area into air-to-ground routing area and ground-to-ground routing area. Based on this, a multi-hop routing protocol based on unequal-sized clustering is proposed to promote the balance of energy consumption between clusters. Then, we propose a sector dynamic adjustment strategy inspired by lottery turntable wheels, which dynamically adjusts the member nodes in each cluster by simulating a rotation to ensure the balance of energy consumption between SNs in the cluster. Finally, the feasibility and efficiency of the proposed protocol are verified through simulation and comparative experiments.