Cooperative transmission and clustering based dynamic directional routing protocol for wireless sensor networks

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) have evolved rapidly and are widely deployed in various applications such as defence, healthcare, automation, and traffic monitoring in smart cities. Due to the rapid development of emerging technologies such as the Internet of Everything (IoE), large volumes of data are transmitted from numerous mobile sensor nodes through various routing mechanisms. In WSNs, efficient data transmission significantly influences energy consumption, node mobility, network topology, and scalability, making routing protocols a critical component in network design. However, many existing routing protocols suffer from high energy consumption, inefficient next-hop selection, and limited adaptability to dynamic network topologies caused by node mobility. These limitations reduce network lifetime and degrade data transmission performance in highly dynamic WSN environments. To address these challenges, this paper proposes a novel Cooperative Transmission and Clustering-based Dynamic Directional Routing Protocol (CTC-DDRP) for WSNs. This protocol operates in three different phases: neighbour transmission area discovery, clustering-based election and selection, and cooperative data transmission. The proposed routing protocol dynamically selects the next forwarding node based on residual energy and mobility criteria, while employing a duty-cycling mechanism to balance energy consumption among the deployed sensor nodes. This highly dynamic and cooperative routing scheme improves reliability and extends network lifetime, even in high-mobility scenarios. The performance of the proposed CTC-DDRP protocol is evaluated through Monte Carlo simulations and compared with several benchmark routing protocols. Simulation results clearly indicate that the proposed CTC-DDRP achieves a 16% higher packet delivery ratio, a 6.0 ms lower end-to-end delay, a 24.05 kbps higher throughput, 2.85 nJ energy savings per round, and 1896.5 nJ higher residual energy after 10,000 rounds, compared with other existing routing protocols under identical simulation conditions. These results indicate that the proposed CTC-DDRP protocol provides an efficient and reliable routing framework for next-generation WSN applications.