Abstract—In recent day, Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) adequately needs effective mechanisms for data forwarding to enhance the energy efficiency in networks. Energy efficiency and is the critical parameters for routing in WSNs. Routing protocols play a major role in WSNs for maintaining routes to ensure reliable communication. In this paper, on demand acquisitions of neighborhood information is used to find the optimal routing paths that reduce the message exchange overhead. It optimizes the number of hops for packet forwarding to the sink node which gives a better solution for energy consumption and delay. The proposed protocol combining on demand Multi hop information based multipath routing (OMLRP) and a gradient based network for achieving optimal path and reduces energy consumption. The network lifetime is prolonged up to 82% when adopting both OMLRP and gradient based network. OMLRP provides the least routing overhead which is most suitable to real time data delivery.

Index Terms—Wireless sensor networks, gradient network, energy efficiency, optimal routing, routing overhead.

K. Nattar Kannan is with Manaonmaniam Sundaranar University, Tirunelveli, India (e-mail: kannannattar@gmail.com).
B. Paramasivan is with the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, National Engineering College, Kovilpatti, Tamilnadu, India (e-mail: bparamasivan@yahoo.co.in).

Cite:K. Nattar Kannan and B. Paramasivan, "Enhancing Energy Efficiency in Wireless Sensor Networks Using Optimal Gradient Routing Protocol," International Journal of Computer and Communication Engineering vol. 3, no. 6, pp. 408-412, 2014.