Wireless Pers Commun

DOI 10.1007/s11277-017-4996-3

Improved Cluster Based Data Gathering Using Ant Lion

Optimization in Wireless Sensor Networks

G. Yogarajan1 • T. Revathi1

 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2017

Abstract Wireless sensor networks play a vital role in this digital world through various
applications in several domains. The sensor networks are heavily energy constrained due to
limited battery power. Therefore, the energy has to be optimally exploited to improve the
lifetime and throughput of the network. Among the various existing approaches, cluster
based routing algorithms are more popular for its balanced and less energy consumption
throughout the communication network. Improper clustering often results in numerous
individual nodes (sensor nodes which are not a part of any clusters). The individual nodes
will send their information to the base station with high transmission power which heavily
impacts the lifetime of the sensor network. Hence, a heuristic Ant Lion Optimization
clustering algorithm for wireless sensor network is proposed in this paper. In the proposed
work, the cluster head selection is modeled as a fitness function of the Antlion optimization
algorithm, which improves the network performance. Also, a Discrete Ant Lion Opti-
mization algorithm is applied to find the optimal data gathering tour for a mobile sink with
minimal data collection tour length. The Discrete Ant Lion optimization algorithm com-
putes the optimal order for the mobile sink to visit the selected cluster head nodes and
collects their data. The simulation results show that the proposed clustering scheme im-
proves the network lifetime, network throughput and it also reduces the number of indi-
vidual nodes when compared to existing algorithms. Also, the proposed cluster-based
mobile data gathering using the Ant Lion Optimization algorithm produces an optimal tour
for the mobile sink to collect data from the cluster head node with minimum data collection
tour distance.

& G. Yogarajan
yogarajang@yahoo.com
T. Revathi
trevathi@mepcoeng.ac.in
1
Department of Information Technology, Mepco Schlenk Engineering College, Sivakasi,
Tamil Nadu 626005, India

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 G. Yogarajan, T. Revathi

Keywords Wireless sensor networks  Clustering  Ant Lion Optimization  Data

gathering  Lifetime  Individual nodes  Throughput  Tour length

1 Introduction

Nowadays, wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are becoming more popular among human
communities through its various applications like surveillance, smart buildings, smart
irrigation, battlefield monitoring, target tracking, healthcare, environment control etc.
[1, 2]. These applications involve a large number of sensor nodes deployed in the region of
interest in a remote area. The sensor nodes are usually compact in size and powered by the
battery source that has limited energy. The WSN consist of onboard sensors to sense
various physical parameters of the environment like moisture, vibration, temperature,
pressure, humidity, sound, etc. In most of the real-time applications, sensor nodes are
deployed in an unmanned, remote or harsh environment where there is no possibility for
human intervention. Hence, it is not easy to replace the battery or recharge it manually [3].
In a sensor node, most of the battery energy gets consumed in two ways (1) Sensing the
various environmental parameters and (2) transmitting the sensor event data to the sink
node through its neighbors. The lifetime of the WSNs is mainly based on the onboard
battery’s available energy. WSNs also suffer from several other issues like limited com-
puting power, communication failure, time-varying fading channels, link bandwidth, etc.
Energy is considered as a major issue in the sensor network since energy is required for
doing all operations on the sensor node. Once the energy gets drained the sensor node is
said to be dead. Hence energy in the sensor network has to be optimally used to improve
the lifetime of the network. In general, the lifetime of the WSN is expressed as the time at
which the first sensor node dead or the time at which 50% of the sensor nodes dead in a
network. Several data aggregation schemes, energy efficient routing algorithms, energy
efficient Medium Access Control (MAC) protocols, etc. have been proposed to make the
network most energy efficient and prolong the lifetime of the network. Most of the existing
works focus on obtaining energy efficiency through devising optimal routing algorithms
for forwarding the sensor data to the sink node [4]. Though there are different types of
routing schemes in WSN like flat routing, hierarchical or cluster based routing, and
location-based routing, cluster based routing improves the performance of the network by
reducing the energy consumption when compared to other routing schemes. In the clus-
tering approach, the sensor nodes are grouped into clusters and controlled by the Cluster
Head (CH). The CHs are often selected based on the metrics like residual energy, distance
to a base station (BS), number of sensor node neighbors, etc. The CH receives the data
from all its cluster members and aggregates the same to remove the redundancy in the data
and finally sends aggregated data to the base station either directly or through their
neighboring CH [5]. Figure 1 shows the architecture of the cluster-based WSN.
Several clustering mechanisms are proposed for WSN to improve the energy efficiency,
throughput and lifetime of the network [6–8]. Low Energy Adaptive Clustering Hierarchy
(LEACH) is a popular cluster-based hierarchical routing protocol in the WSN [9]. In
LEACH, the CHs are randomly selected in such a way that the burden of being a CH and
their high energy dissipation is equally distributed across all the sensor nodes of the
network on a rotational basis. The selected CHs receive the data from its members and
send the aggregated data to the BS using a Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA)
schedule saving significant amount of energy. Let ‘N’ indicates the number of nodes in the
network and ‘k’ indicates the expected number of CHs for a particular round. The

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Fig. 1 The architecture of cluster-based WSN

algorithm ensures that all the nodes become a CH equal number of times and the energy of
all sensor nodes are approximately equal after ‘N/k’ rounds. The probability function Pr(t)
that estimates the probability that a node ‘t’ becomes a CH during the round ‘r’ is given by
Eq. (1).
8
> k
>
<   : CHInd ðtÞ ¼ 1
N
PrðtÞ ¼ N  k  r mod ð1Þ
>
> k
:
0: CHInd ðtÞ ¼ 0
where CHInd(t) is a function that indicates whether a node ‘t’ has become CH during the
recent rounds. CHInd(t) becomes 1 if the node is not being selected as CH during the recent
rounds and will be 0 if the node already has been elected as CH during the recent rounds.
Despite its popularity among the WSN community, LEACH also has several disad-
vantages. LEACH does not consider the distribution of sensor nodes within the network
layout and the available residual energy in each node for the CH election process during
each round. Since the CHs are selected in a probabilistic manner, sometimes it may result
in a situation where no CH is elected. Sometimes, the selected CH may be at the boundary
of the network that consumes more energy and causes uneven energy distribution among
the sensor nodes in the network. Sometimes few sensor nodes may be left without asso-
ciated to any of the elected CH as a member and have to send their sensor data directly to
the base station with higher transmission power. Such nodes are called as individual nodes.
Increased number of individual nodes in the WSN after clustering may often leads to
reduced lifetime of the network. A WSN scenario where the formation of individual nodes
after clustering is shown in the Fig. 2.
LEACH-Centralized (LEACH-C) is the modified version of the conventional LEACH
protocol [10]. The BS gets the location information and current energy level from each
sensor node and runs a centralized cluster formation algorithm and selects the CH. The
selected CHs are evenly distributed among the network, but it doesn’t scale for a large
number of nodes in the network. Also, the same sensor node may become CH during the
subsequent rounds that reduce the chance of other sensor nodes becoming a CH that results
in unbalanced energy consumption in the network. Furthermore, each sensor node requires
GPS receivers for estimating its location information. Each sensor node has to periodically

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Fig. 2 Clustering with individual nodes

send their various control information that includes their location and residual energy that
increases the message overhead in the network. Due to the transmission of several numbers
of control packets from the sensor node to the BS, the network throughput also gets
reduced.
Improved-LEACH (I-LEACH) is an another improved version of the LEACH protocol
[11]. In this protocol, the CHs are selected based on their residual energy and the number
of neighbors of a sensor node. Here, the CH selection scheme improves the overall network
lifetime, energy efficiency and the packet delivery ratio over LEACH. This is because the
CH nodes are selected such that node’s residual energy is higher and the node is able to
cover large of neighbor nodes in the network. Also, in this scheme sleep state is used to
reduce the energy consumption of sensor nodes that senses the same information in their
neighborhood region. In this scheme, the CH selected may be far away from the BS and
consume more power for data transmission, since the distance between CH and the sensor
node is not considered during clustering.
In Weighted Clustering Algorithm (WCA) [12], the sensor nodes are assumed to have
mobility. The CH is selected based on parameters like the speed of the node, the degree of
the node, the distance between neighboring sensor nodes, battery energy and the time at
which a node was CH earlier. Each sensor node calculates a weight based on the above
parameters and a node is selected as CH if its weight is larger than the weights of other
sensor nodes. Otherwise, the sensor node becomes a member of CH which is nearer to it.
Here the size of the cluster is limited considering the energy efficiency.
In threshold based clustering protocol for WSN [13], the CH nodes are selected con-
sidering the residual energy at each node and the distance between each node. This helps to
improve the first dead node time and the average residual energy when compared to
LEACH. However, the performance can still be improved significantly by bringing more
parameters while clustering the network. In [14], genetic algorithm is used for clustering
and routing in sensor network based on the residual energy of each node and the distance
between sensor nodes to their CH.
Nowadays, various heuristic algorithms are used for the optimal CH selection and
clustering in WSN [15, 16]. In Enhanced-Optimized energy efficient routing protocol

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(EOEERP) [16], Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) algorithm is used for clustering the
sensor nodes in the WSN. The usage of PSO reduces the formation of individual nodes
during clustering. In PSO, each node is considered as a particle and fitness value for each
particle is calculated based on the energy of the particle, energy of the neighbors of a
particular particle and the distance between the particular particle and its neighbors. The
node with highest fitness value is selected as CH and their neighbors are included as its
cluster members. Then the node with next highest fitness value is selected as the next CH
and their neighbors are considered as its cluster members. This is continued until all the
sensor nodes become either a CH or the part of any of the clusters that are formed. But in
this protocol, the number of neighbors and the distance between the base station and each
particle were not considered during the clustering process. This leads to an increased
number of clusters and increased transmission power during the data communication
leading to reduced lifetime and decreased energy efficiency for large scale sensor
networks.
Ant Lion Optimizer is a nature inspired optimization algorithm that mimics the hunting
behavior of antlions. The algorithm provides competitive results for various mathematical
functions, engineering problems and challenging constrained real problems in the world.
The algorithm provides better results in terms of improved exploration of the search space,
avoid local optima, better convergence rate [17].
In [18], the data gathering tour by a mobile sink is modeled as a discrete optimization
problem and a Discrete Ant Lion Optimization (DALO) algorithm is proposed to solve it.
The mobile sink starts from the BS visits all the sensor nodes in the network according to
the optimal solution produced by the DALO algorithm. It collects all the data from all the
sensor nodes and finally reports it to the BS for further processing. Moreover, there is no
work on WSN clustering using Ant Lion Optimization so far and thus motivated to apply
ant lion optimizer to find the optimal CHs from sensor nodes using the proposed fitness
function and also for mobile data gathering applications.
In this paper, a heuristic Ant Lion Optimization for Clustering (ALOC) algorithm is
proposed to improve the network performance in terms of energy efficiency, lifetime of the
network, throughput and reduced number of individual nodes. In this work, a fitness
function is formulated in terms of residual energy of each sensor node, the number of
neighbors of each sensor node, the cumulative distance from a particular sensor node to all
its neighbor nodes and the distance between the sensor node and the BS. The Antlion
optimization is used to evaluate the optimal solution over different generations for the
formulated fitness function. The optimal solution generated gives the optimal constant
values for the evaluated fitness function using which the fitness value for all the sensor
nodes is calculated. The sensor node with largest fitness value is selected as CH, which
covers the maximum number of the sensor nodes forming a cluster and node with next
highest fitness value is selected as CH for the next cluster and this continues until all the
sensor nodes are a part of a cluster. Next, the selected CH nodes are applied to the Discrete
Ant Lion Optimization algorithm which computes an optimal schedule for a mobile sink
data collector node to visit all the CH nodes and collect their data with minimal data
collection tour length. The algorithm is tested extensively to demonstrate its performance
over other algorithms. The main contributions of the proposed work are summarized as
follows:
• Mathematical formulation of the fitness function for cluster formation
• Antlion optimization based energy efficient CH selection algorithm
• Mathematical formulation of the mobile data gathering problem for Cluster based WSN

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• Simulation of the proposed algorithm to demonstrate the efficiency over other

algorithms.
The rest of the paper is organized as follows: Sect. 2 outlines the network model of the
sensor network considered for the simulation and the problem definition. Section 3 dis-
cusses the proposed clustering and data gathering algorithm and Sect. 4 presents the
simulation results. Section 5 provides the conclusion of the paper.

2 Network Model

In the proposed sensor network model, the sensor nodes are assumed to be deployed
randomly within a square layout region. It is also assumed that that sensor nodes have
uniform energy level. Moreover, it is also assumed that the sensor nodes know their
position of current location and the BS is aware of the position of all the deployed sensor
nodes within the network. The proposed network model consists of a single BS that gathers
data from all the sensor nodes. The BS is assumed to be located at the location (0, 0) for all
simulations. All the available sensor nodes assumed to transfer their data based on a
pffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
threshold value do = ðEFS =EMP Þ; where EFS indicate the energy consumed in free space
for sending a single bit and EMP indicate the energy consumed in the multipath model for
sending a single bit.

2.1 Problem Statement

In the WSN, each sensor node consumes energy while sensing the events, processing the
sensor events data and transmitting the sensor event information to the base station. Thus,
more energy is consumed by the set of sensor nodes when they detect the same event and
forward it to the BS using single hop or multi-hop communication that results in a reduced
network lifetime. Most of the clustering algorithms discussed in the previous section
focused on optimizing the CH selection, cluster formation, and cluster communication. The
key issue in the clustering algorithms is how to optimally select the CHs and build the
cluster. If the number of clusters is less, the CHs have to send their data to a BS with
reduced total distance from CHs to the base station, but it increases the intra-cluster
communication (communication between CH and their members) distance. If the number
of CHs is more, intra-cluster communication distance decreases while it increases the total
distance between CHs and the BS. Hence, in the proposed work, a fitness function is
formulated using the residual energy of individual nodes, the number of neighbors of a
node, the cumulative distance between a particular sensor node and its neighbors and the
distance between the BS and a particular sensor node. The fitness function is evaluated
using the heuristic ALOC algorithm and optimal CHs are selected based on the nodes with
high fitness value. The ALOC selects the optimal number of CHs from the sensor nodes,
improving lifetime, throughput, energy efficiency, reducing the individual node formation
and the unbalanced CH distribution. By using the selected CHs, an mobile data gathering
tour problem is modeled and solved using DALO. The optimal solution produced by the
DALO algorithm reduces the distance traveled by the mobile sink to collect data from all
the CHs. The data gathering by the mobile sink to collect data from all CHs is illustrated in
Fig. 3.

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Fig. 3 Mobile data gathering by a mobile sink from the base station

3 Ant Lion Optimization Based Clustering and Data Gathering

3.1 Motivation for the Ant Lion Optimization Algorithm

Antlions are a kind of unusual insects belong to Myrmeleontidae family. The antlions are
popularly called as Doodlebug during their larval stages. They construct funnel-shaped pits
in the sand during their larval stages that will help them to hunt insects and the adulthood
period is used for their reproduction. The Antlion larvae digs a pit and hides itself at the
bottom of the pit and wait for the insects. The Antlion hunts the insects trapped in the pit by
throwing sand towards the edges of the pit in such a way that the insects cannot escape.
Finally, the Antlion consume its prey under the pit and amend the pit for the next hunt.
This intelligent behavior of hunting of antlions motivates to formulate a heuristic algorithm
that can be applied to optimization problems in several disciplines.

3.2 Basics of Ant Lion Optimization Algorithm

A nature-inspired heuristic algorithm called Ant Lion Optimizer (ALO) based on the above
hunting behavior is proposed in [17] and it is tested with several mathematical functions
and three classical engineering problems. The following assumptions were set during the
optimization process using the hunting behavior of antlions.
• The ants move around the search space using different random walk which are affected
by the traps of antlions.
• Antlions can build pits proportional to their fitness which in turn increase their
probability to catch the ants.
• Each ant can be caught by an Antlion, which is marked as elite Antlion (Antlion with
highest fitness value).
• An ant is said to be caught by an Antlion, if its fitness is higher than the Antlion.

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In ALO algorithm, the random movement of ants is modelled using a random walk phe-
nomenon as given in Eq. 2. Here a cumulative sum function and a random function given
in Eq. 3 are used to mimic the random walk characteristic over different iterations.
AðiÞ ¼ ½0; cumsumð2rði1 Þ  1Þ; cumsumð2rði2 Þ  1Þ; . . .; . . .; cumsumð2rðiiter Þ  1Þ
ð2Þ


1; if rand [ 0:5
r ðDÞ ¼ ð3Þ
0; if rand  0:5
Here, A(i) indicates the random walk movement of an ant ‘i’, ‘iter’ refers to the number of
iterations, r(D) is a random generating function where ‘D’ dictates the step size of the
random walk.
To keep the random walk of the ants within the search space, a min–max normalization
given in Eq. 4 is used here. It is used to ensure that the ants walk within the search space.
 t   
t Ai  ai  di  cti
Ai ¼ þ ci ð4Þ
ðdit  ai Þ
Here Ati indicates the position of ith ant at tth iteration, ai is the minimum of the random
walk of ith ant, cti and dit indicate the minimum and maximum of ith ant at tth iteration
respectively.
The random walks of the ants get affected by the trap built by the Antlion in a 2-D
search space. This behavior is formulated mathematically as given in Eq. (5).
cti ¼ Antliontj þ ct
ð5Þ
dit ¼ Antliontj þ dt

where ct and d t represents the minimum and maximum of all variables at iteration-t
respectively, cti represents the minimum and maximum of all variables at iteration-t for ith
ant respectively and Antliontj shows the position of the selected jth Antlion at iteration-t.
The fitness value of each Antlion decides the effectiveness of the trap build by it, which
makes the ant to slide down when it tries to escape. This increases the probability of
catching a prey by an Antlion. By using the principle of elitism, the best solution obtained
during each generation will be referred as elite Antlion which affects the movements of
ants during each iteration. Using a roulette wheel, an Antlion will be selected using which
the positions of ants get changed which helps to achieve the optimal soon. This charac-
teristic of ants is modeled as in Eq. (6). The position of each ant gets updated with the help
of random walk towards a randomly selected Antlion (RtA ) and random walk towards elite
Antlion (RtE ).
RtA þ RtE
Antit ¼ ð6Þ
2
For each Antlion in the population, the ALO optimization algorithm applies the following
steps:
Building Trap The hunting behavior of antlions is modelled by using roulette wheel. It is
used to select an Antlion with high fitness value from its population during optimization
to hunt an ant. The ants are assumed to be trapped in only one selected Antlion.

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Catching Preys and Rebuilding Trap In this step, the Antlion consume the ant at the
bottom of the trap and modifies its position to build a new trap to catch a new prey.
Figure 4 depicts the structure of an Antlion pit and how it catches a prey [19].
The Antlion catches its prey when the fitness of the prey is greater than the fitness of the
Antlion as illustrated in Eq. 7, where f (Ant) and f (Antlion) indicates the fitness value of
ant and Antlion respectively.
Antliontj ¼ Antti ; if f ðAntti Þ [ f ðAntliontj Þ: ð7Þ

3.3 Clustering Using ALO

The performance of the Ant Lion Optimizer algorithm in various continuous optimization
problems motivates us to apply the same for building optimal clusters in the WSN. In the
proposed work, after the sensor node deployment within the specified network layout, the
BS helps the sensor nodes to perform clustering by computing the fitness function. Here
each sensor node in the network is considered as an ant/Antlion, each with an initial
random solution for the fitness function to be optimized for selecting the optimal CHs.
The fitness value for a sensor node/ant/Antlion is computed as a function of the fol-
lowing parameters: (1) energy of the sensor node/ant/Antlion, (2) the number of neigh-
boring nodes of a sensor node/ant/Antlion within its radio coverage region, (3) the
cumulative distance between a sensor node and its neighbors and (4) distance between the
sensor node or ant/Antlion and the base station. The fitness value is computed for each ant
and Antlion. The elite Antlion/sensor node with highest fitness value at the end of the final
iteration of ALOC algorithm is selected as CH and its neighbors are added as the members
of the new cluster. Similarly, the remaining sensor nodes are brought into subsequent
clusters with the help of Antlion that has next highest fitness value.
The fitness function (Fi) to select the CH using ALO is modeled as in Eq. (8).
X
Fi ¼ a1  ð dij Þ þ a2  Eres ðiÞ þ a3  nneigh ðiÞ þ a4  di;BS ð8Þ
P
where a1, a2, a3 and a4 are constants between [0,1], dij is the cumulative distance

Fig. 4 Antlion pit and prey

hunting

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between a node ‘i’ and its neighbors, nneigh(i) indicates the number of neighbor nodes for
the node ‘i’, di,BS is the Euclidean distance between the node ‘i’ and the base station.
For each iteration, the fitness value is calculated for each ant/Antlion. The Antlion with
highest fitness value is labeled as Elite Antlion in each iteration and each ant is made to
walk randomly using Eq. (2) to update its position towards a randomly selected Antlion
node. After the random movement of the ants, the position of the ants is normalized using
Eq. (4) to confine their position within the search space. Then the fitness function is
calculated using the updated ant’s position and compared with the fitness value of the
randomly selected Antlion. Then the fitness values are swapped if any of the ant’s fitness is
greater than the fitness of that random Antlion. The fitness value of the random Antlion is
compared with that of the Elite Antlion and if it is greater than the elite, then the randomly
selected Antlion is marked as the new elite. This continues until the end of all iterations
and finally, the elite Antlion returns the optimum parameters for the fitness function and
the optimum fitness value. The obtained optimum parameters are used to compute the
fitness value given in Eq. (8) for each sensor node. The sensor node with the highest value
is marked as CH, the cluster is built marking their neighbors as cluster members. This
process is continued till all the sensor nodes become a part of the cluster resulting in
reduced number of individual nodes. The fitness function in Eq. (8) considers the number
of neighbors of a node as a part of the fitness function, the optimal CH obtained because of
the proposed ALOC algorithm covers a large number of sensor nodes saves the energy of
the sensor nodes. Considering the cumulative distance between a sensor node and their
neighbors for the fitness function helps to select a CH node that is closer to many of the
sensor nodes that save the energy of the sensor nodes. This energy saving increases the
lifetime of the network and it also reduces the chance of residual node formation. The
energy of a node is Eq. (8) makes the algorithm to select a sensor node with considerable
energy as CH, avoiding the low energy sensor energy becoming a CH. The distance
between a sensor node and a BS in the fitness function helps to select a CH, which is far
away from the BS saving the energy. The pseudo-code of Ant Lion Optimization algorithm
for Clustering is given in the Fig. 5.

3.4 Cluster Based Mobile Data gathering Using Discrete Ant Lion
Optimization Algorithm

In our earlier work [20], a discrete firefly algorithm was proposed to find out an optimal data
gathering tour for a mobile sink in WSN without clustering. The discrete firefly algorithm
provides optimal tour for the mobile sink to collect the sensor data with comparatively less
tour distance. In the proposed work, the cluster based mobile data gathering by a mobile sink
node is modeled as a combinatorial optimization problem similar to a travelling salesman
problem. Here, the mobile sink node visits all the selected CH nodes one by one in an optimal
order and collects their data. The DALO algorithm [18] is applied to the selected CH nodes
and the obtained solution provides the optimal order to visit and collect the data from all the
CHs. The mobile sink node has been allowed to visit each CH only once during its data
gathering tour with minimum total travel distance. Therefore, the linear programming for-
mulation of the mobile data gathering tour problem is as follows [21, 22]:
X
N X
N
min Z ¼ distxy CHxy ð9Þ
x¼1 y6¼x;y¼1

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Input: (1) Number of sensor nodes: n

(2) Layout size: M X M
(3) Coverage radius
(4) Fitness function
(5) Number of search agents
(6) Number of Generations
(7) Initial Energy
Output: Optimal Cluster Heads (CHs) and their Co-ordinates
Step 1: Initialize the parameter values to Number of sensor nodes, Layout size, Coverage radius, No.
of search agents, No. of Generations
Step 2: Initialize the Objective function as given in Eq. (8).
Step 3: Initialize the positions of Ants and Antlions
Step 4: Deploy sensor nodes within the prescribed layout using rand() function and place BS at (0,0)
co-ordinate.
Step 5: Compute the distance between the all the sensor nodes, distance to BS.
Step 6: Calculate the fitness value of antlions using Eq. (8) and sort them
Step 7: While (Current_Iteration <No. of Generation)
for each ant in the population
• The Position is updated towards the Elite Antlion and a randomly selected Antlion
using Eq. (2) & Eq. (6)
• min-max normalization is used to keep the ants in random walks inside the search
space using Eq.(4)
• Calculate the fitness value of each ant using Eq. (8) and sort them
End
Merge the populations of ants and antlions and sort them
Create new Antlion population based on the above sorted fitness value
Select the best Antlion and mark it as Elite based on its fitness value
End while
Step 8: Global best antlion gives the optimal values for the variables in Eq. (8)
Step 9: Select Sensor node with high value obtained using Eq.(8) is termed as CH and their neighbors
are added as Cluster members to form a cluster and continued with remaining sensor nodes.
Step 10: Stop

Fig. 5 Peudo-code of Ant Lion Optimization algorithm for Clustering (ALOC)

CHxy 2 f0; 1g where x; y ¼ 1; . . .; N ð10Þ

X
N
CHxy ¼ 1 where y ¼ 1; . . .; N ð11Þ
x¼1;x6¼y

X
N
CHxy ¼ 1 where x ¼ 1; . . .; N ð12Þ
y¼1;y6¼x

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Table 1 Representation of ant/Antlion (solution)

5 2 1 7 3 4 6 ? CH
ID
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 ?
Index

Here, ‘N’ indicates the number of CH nodes and distxy refers to the distance between two
CH nodes ‘x’ and ‘y’. If there is a path from CH nodes ‘x’ and ‘y’, then CHxy is assigned as
‘1’ else ‘0’ as given in Eq. (10). The CH sensor nodes are labeled with the identifiers 1 to
N. Equations (11) and (12) ensures that each CH node is visited only once by a mobile
sink. The following assumptions are made in this mathematical model: the feasible solu-
tion contains only one closed sequence of CHs, distance between two CHs nodes is equal
from either side. A sample Ant/Antlion solution representation in the DALO algorithm is
illustrated in Table 1.
Every element in the first row of the above mentioned solution in Table 1 represents a
CH node ID and each element in the second row represents the index, which indicates the

Input: (1) Set of CH nodes and their co-ordinates

(2) Objective function
(3) Number of ants, antlions
(4) Number of Generations
Output: Optimal Tour and Data collection tour length
Step 1: Initialize the parameter values to the Number of CHs, No. of ant, antlions & No. of
generations
Step 2: Initialize the Objective function as given in Eq. (9).
Step 3: Initialize the Ants and Antlions with random solution(permutation)
Step 4: Compute the distance between each CH node and construct distance matrix ‘dij’ and the
CH adjacency matrix (CHxy)
Step 5: Calculate the fitness of each Antlion using Eq. (9) and sort them and mark best Antlion as elite
Step 6: While (Current_Iteration < No. of Generation)
for each ant in the population
Ant position is updated towards the Elite Antlion and a random Antlion
Calculate the fitness value of each ant using Eq. (9) and sort them
End
Merge the populations of ants and antlions and sort them
Create new Antlion population based on the above sorted fitness value
Select the best Antlion and mark it as Elite based on its fitness value
End while
Step 8: Global best Antlion gives the optimal tour for data gathering and data collection tour length
Step 9: Stop

Fig. 6 Peudo-code of Discrete Ant Lion Optimization (DALO) algorithm

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order to visit the CH nodes by a mobile sink during its data collection tour. In the above
solution, the mobile sink starts from BS, collects data from node 5, node 2, node 1, node 7,
node 3, node 4, node 6 and report it finally to the BS.
The various steps involved in solving the mobile data gathering tour problem using
DALO are outlined in Fig. 6.

4 Simulation and Results

4.1 Simulation Environment

The proposed algorithm was tested using Matlab R2013 that runs on Core i5 @ 3.1 GHz
CPU. The simulations were performed with 100 sensor nodes deployed randomly in a
100 m 9 100 m layout using the rand() function and the BS is positioned at the top left
corner. The initial energy of each sensor node was assumed as 0.5 J. The performance of
the proposed algorithm was compared with LEACH, iLEACH, and E-OEERP. The
obtained results demonstrate that the proposed Clustering algorithm improves the lifetime
and throughput of the WSN considerably. The number of search agents and the number of
generations in the DALO algorithm was set as 20 and 100 respectively. The network
parameters used for the simulations are given in Table 2.

4.2 Performance Metrics

The performance of the proposed cluster based data gathering algorithm was measured
using the following metrics.
A. Number of dead nodes: It is defined as the number of nodes whose battery energy gets
drained and can’t continue their operations over the remaining rounds.
B. Number of alive nodes: It is defined as the number of nodes which have a non-zero
available energy in their battery and participates in communication across the network.

Table 2 Network parameters

Parameters Value

Number of nodes 100

Deployment layout 100 m 9 100 m
Deployment type Random
Base station location (0, 0)
Initial energy of nodes 0.5 J
Radius of coverage 30 m
Transmission energy 50 nJ
Receiver energy 50 nJ
Location of BS (0, 0)
EMP 0.0013 pJ
EFS 100 pJ
EDA 0.5 nJ
Number of rounds 2500

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C. Residual energy of sensor nodes: It is defined as the total amount of remaining energy
in a sensor node deployed over the entire network.
D. Throughput: It is defined as the ratio of the number of packets successfully received by
the BS to the total number of packets transmitted. Higher the throughput, better the
performance of the network.
E. Lifetime: It is defined as the time at which the 50% of sensor nodes in a network was
observed to be dead. Longer the lifetime, the deployed WSN operates satisfactorily for
a longer amount of time.
F. Number of individual nodes: It is defined as the number of sensor nodes left individual
without added into a cluster while clustering. More number of individual nodes make
the network disconnected quickly and create a hotspot problem.
G. Number of Cluster Heads: It is defined as the number of CH nodes selected using the
fitness function from the deployed network while clustering the entire network.
H. Data collection tour length: It is defined as the distance travelled by a mobile sink node
to collect the data from all the CH nodes.

4.3 Experimental Results

In the following subsections, we discuss the performance of the proposed algorithm with
respect to the metrics discussed in Sect. 4.2.

4.3.1 Number of Dead Nodes

The performance of the proposed algorithm was tested with respect to the number of dead
nodes within the network over the number of rounds. In Fig. 7, the first sensor node is
observed to be dead on the 906th round in LEACH, 1375th round in iLEACH, 569th round
in E-OEERP and 2440th round in the proposed ALOC algorithm. The proposed clustering
scheme outperforms the other existing algorithms in terms of the number of dead nodes
which can be observed from Fig. 7. The formulated fitness function given by Eq. (8), takes
care of minimizing the energy consumption in sensor nodes by selecting CH nodes in such

Fig. 7 Number of rounds versus number of dead nodes

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Fig. 8 Number of rounds versus number of alive nodes

a way that their available energy is higher. Thus the available energy is optimally used by
all the sensor nodes and this results in sensor nodes to optimally use their available energy
which reduces the chances of being a dead node when compared to other algorithms.

4.3.2 Number of Alive Nodes

Figure 8 shows the performance comparison of the proposed algorithm with LEACH,
iLEACH, E-OEERP in terms of number of alive nodes with respect to number of rounds.
Alive nodes are sensor nodes, which have non-zero remaining available energy in their
battery. For a satisfactory operation of the WSN, the number of alive nodes should be
higher in a network which in turn prolongs the lifetime of the network. It is evident that
there are more number of alive nodes are found over the deployed network for a longer
period of time in the proposed algorithm as shown in Fig. 8. This is because we consider
energy efficient clustering by considering the residual energy of sensor nodes and the
degree of a sensor node.

4.3.3 Cumulative Residual Energy

The performance of the proposed algorithm in terms of the amount of cumulative residual
energy of sensor nodes is compared with respect to the number of rounds is shown in
Fig. 9. The Initial cumulative residual energy of all sensor nodes is 50 J (i.e. 100 node-
s 9 E = 0.5 J). Figure 9 illustrates that the proposed algorithm has high amount of
cumulative residual energy over other algorithms over the time. Because, in this work the
CHs were selected considering their number of neighbors, the distance from their neigh-
bors, the distance to the BS and also the residual energy. This saves considerable amount of
energy in a sensor node which in turn improves the cumulative residual energy. This makes
the sensor nodes to optimally use their energy extending their working status for a longer
period of time.

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Fig. 9 Number of rounds versus residual energy of sensor nodes

4.3.4 Throughput

In Fig. 10, the throughput of the proposed algorithm is compared with LEACH, iLEACH,
E-OEERP with respect to number of rounds. It can be clearly observed that the proposed
algorithm outperforms all the other algorithms. In the proposed algorithm, the energy
efficient CH selection and clustering improves the number of alive nodes and the residual
energy of nodes in the network. The throughput of the proposed algorithm is higher than
50% that of all other algorithms, which increases the efficacy of the deployed network.
Large number of packets were successfully transmitted to the BS in the proposed algorithm
compared to other algorithms. The energy, distance and degree parameters were exploited
in the proposed algorithm as in Eq. 8 to achieve improved throughput.

Fig. 10 Number of rounds versus throughput

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4.3.5 Lifetime of the Network

Figure 11 illustrates the performance of the proposed clustering algorithm in terms of the
lifetime of the network with respect to the energy of the sensor nodes. In the proposed
work, the network lifetime is considered as the time at which 50% of the sensor nodes were
dead. When the available energy of sensor node is higher, the sensor nodes operate sat-
isfactorily for larger number of rounds. The performance of the proposed algorithm out-
performs all the other algorithms in terms of lifetime. It is due to the fact that, in the
proposed clustering, the CH nodes were selected such that it has optimal residual energy
and it has more number of sensor node neighbors within their coverage region with optimal
distance to BS and their neighbor nodes. The proposed algorithm ALOC provides 54%
improved lifetime over the LEACH, 35% over the iLEACH, 13% improvement over the
E-OEERP when the energy of the sensor node is 0.5 J. By increasing the initial energy of
sensor nodes, the lifetime of the network also gets increased,

4.3.6 Number of Individual Nodes

In Fig. 12, the performance of the proposed clustering algorithm is compared in terms of
the number of individual nodes formed with other algorithms. Individual nodes in a sensor
network reduces its lifetime considerably. It is evident that from Fig. 12, in the proposed
algorithm, very less number of individual nodes were formed when compared to other
algorithms. Whereas in LEACH, iLEACH, and E-OEERP the number of individual nodes
is comparatively higher because the CH are not selected optimally exploiting their energy
and distance parameters in the considered scenario. Here, 43 sensor nodes become indi-
vidual nodes in LEACH, 19 sensor nodes in iLEACH, 6 sensor nodes in E-OEERP and the
proposed ALOC algorithm produces only 2 sensor nodes as individual nodes after
clustering.

Fig. 11 Energy versus lifetime

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50
45 43

Number of Individual nodes

40
35
30
25
20 19

15
10
6
5 2
0
LEACH iLEACH E-OEERP ALOC

Fig. 12 Algorithms versus number of individual nodes

4.3.7 Number of Cluster Heads

In Fig. 13, the performance of the proposed clustering algorithm in terms of the number of
CHs selected in a round is illustrated and compared with other algorithms. In this
experiment, the simulation is repeated 25 times with random deployment on sensor net-
work and the performance is measured. The proposed clustering algorithm, selects com-
parably less number of CHs when compared to other algorithms. Though the number of
CHs selected is similar as that of E-OEERP, the distribution of CHs selected by E-OEERP
is not optimal in nature which leads to inefficient energy consumption among the sensor
nodes, formation of individual nodes and also reduces the lifetime of the sensor nodes.
Thus the proposed algorithm selects optimal number of CHs which are uniformly dis-
tributed throughout the network, which reduces the inter-cluster communication overhead
in WSN.

4.3.8 Mobile Data Gathering Tour

In this section, the proposed heuristic Ant Lion Optimization for Clustering is combined
with Discrete Ant Lion Optimization algorithm to solve cluster based mobile data

30

25 24
Number of Cluster Heads

23

20

15
12 12

10

0
LEACH iLEACH E-OEERP ALOC

Fig. 13 Algorithms versus number of cluster heads

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Improved Cluster Based Data Gathering Using Ant Lion Optimization…

600
548

Data Collection Tour Length

500 474

399
400 367

300

200

100

0
LEACH + DALO iLEACH + DALO E-OEERP + DALO ALOC + DALO

Fig. 14 Algorithms versus data collection tour length

gathering problem in sensor networks. The proposed clustering algorithm is applied to find
the optimal number of CH nodes and the obtained set of CHs were applied to the Discrete
Ant Lion Optimization algorithm [18]. The DALO algorithm computes an energy efficient
optimal solution using which the mobile sink starts its data collection tour visits all the CH
nodes according to the solution provided by DALO and collects their data. The perfor-
mance of the proposed clustering algorithm applied to data gathering problem is measured
in terms of data collection tour length of the mobile sink which is illustrated in Fig. 14. The
simulation is repeated 25 times with random deployment on the network and the perfor-
mance is measured in terms of their average tour length. It is evident that from Fig. 14, the
tour length traveled by a mobile sink data collector is comparably less when compared to
other approaches and the proposed ALOC algorithm integrated with DALO provides 29%
reduced tour length over LEACH, 33% over iLEACH and 8% over E-OEERP.

5 Conclusion

In this paper, an improved Clustering based data gathering using Ant Lion Optimization is
proposed. The performance of the clustering algorithm is evaluated and compared with the
existing clustering protocols. The proposed clustering algorithm increases the lifetime of
the sensor network at least by 13% over other clustering algorithms. The residual energy of
the sensor node is high due to the optimal CH selection and clustering using the proposed
heuristic Antlion optimization algorithm. Because of the optimal usage of node’s available
energy in the battery due to proposed algorithm, the lifetime of the network gets prolonged,
increased number of packets has been received at the base station improving the
throughput of the network, reduced the number of individual nodes after clustering. The
proposed algorithm is well suited for large scale homogeneous wireless sensor networks.
The Discrete Ant Lion Optimization algorithm applied to the selected cluster heads yields
an optimal tour to collect all their data by a mobile sink. The proposed algorithm reduces
the overall distance traveled by the mobile sink by a minimum of 8% over other algorithms
and thus extends the lifetime of the network.

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G. Yogarajan received his B.E. degree in Electronics and Commu-

nication Engineering from Bharathiar University, India in 2002 and his
M.E. degree in Communication Systems from Anna University, India
in 2005. He is currently pursuing his Ph.D. in the field of clustering and
data gathering in Wireless Sensor Networks under Anna University,
India. He is currently working as Associate Professor in Department of
Information Technology, Mepco Schlenk Engineering College, Siva-
kasi, India. He has presented and published more than 10 papers in
conferences and journals. His research interests include Clustering and
data gathering in wireless sensor networks, Nature inspired heuristic
algorithms, and signal processing. He is a Life member of IETE, CSI,
and ISTE.

Dr. T. Revathi received her B.E. degree in Electrical and Electronics

Engineering from Madurai Kamaraj University, India in 1986, the
M.E. degree in Computer Science and Engineering from Bharathiar
University, India in 1995 and Ph.D. degree in computer networks from
the M.S. University, India in 2008. She is currently working as a
Senior Professor and Head of the Department of Information Tech-
nology, Mepco Schlenk Engineering College, India. She has conducted
Workshops and Conferences in the areas of computer networks and
multimedia. She has presented and published more than 33 papers in
conferences and journals. Her research interests include: computer
networks, multimedia, data mining, algorithms and network security,
and Big data. She is a Life member of Computer Society of India and
Indian Society for Technical Education.

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