An Energy-Centric Routing Protocol for IoT Networks in 5G and Beyond

The Internet of things expanded quickly, giving rise to numerous services, apps, sensor-integrated electronic devices, and related protocols, many of which are still under development. Improvements to network longevity and energy efficiency are the main goals of IoT-based WSNs, hence several clustering techniques are suggested to reduce energy consumption. To boost capacity in a multi-path channel environment, IoT devices are currently incorporated via several communication interfaces, often known as multiple-in and multiple-out (MIMO) in 5G networks. Every interface has unique qualities that could be desired as well as helpful in certain user contexts. A robust clustering approach for highly active IoT systems is lacking and must be developed in order to support a variety of user applications, especially as MIMO becomes more readily accessible on IoT devices. The energy efficiency and network longevity are enhanced in the proposed system, MIMO-based energy-centric routing protocol (MIMO-ECRP), for usage on the IoT in the 5G context as well as later on. The MIMO-ECRP method uses both types of topologies (i.e., a multi-hop configuration enabling inter-cluster communication or a single-hop configuration with intra-cluster communication) and the K-means-based network partition technique to cluster the nodes. In order to avoid redundant information transfer, threshold-based criteria have been provided in simulations as well as practical applications whilst minimal changes get observed. Also, the suggested MIMO-ECRP costs 20–30% less energy per cluster head than the prevailing approach. The simulation results reveal that when it comes to energy efficiency with longevity of networks, the proposed MIMO-ECRP method performs more effectively compared to previous advanced techniques.