Fuzzy Logic-Based Sink Selection and Load Balancing in Multi-Sink Wireless Sensor Networks

Using multiple sink nodes in wireless sensor networks can greatly improve the lifetime and throughput of the network. One of the important issues in multi-sink wireless sensor networks is the congestion problem in sink nodes which reduces the effectiveness of data processing in sink nodes and increases the energy consumption of the sensor nodes. To prevent congestion in the sink nodes, in this paper, a distributed fuzzy logic-based sink selection algorithm is presented for one-hop sensor networks which makes each sensor node able to independently select a sink node based on the congestion situations in all the sink nodes. This scheme can effectively prevent congestion in the sink nodes and provide load balancing among them. Moreover, it reduces the delay of successful data transmissions to the sink nodes and improves the lifetime of wireless sensor networks by reducing the number of packet retransmissions. Simulation results indicate the effectiveness of our proposed solution.