Smart Energy-Aware HMAC-BLAKE2s based PEGASIS Routing Protocol for IoT-Integrated Next-Generation Wireless Sensor Networks

Next-generation Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) connected to the Internet of Things (IoT) necessitate routing protocols that are both energy-efficient and resilient to emerging cyber threats. Traditional PEGASIS (Power-Efficient Gathering in Sensor Information Systems)-based routing approaches primarily focus on minimizing energy consumption while often overlooking data integrity and authentication necessities. To overcome these difficulties, this study offers a smart energy-aware PEGASIS routing protocol for IoT-enabled WSN environments that incorporates HMAC-BLAKE2 security measures. PEGASIS is employed to reduction communication overhead by forming energy-optimal chains, thereby minimizing the number of long-range transmissions. To development security, the protocol incorporates HMAC (Hash-based Message Authentication Code) utilizing BLAKE2s, a fast and cryptographically strong message authentication algorithm suitable for resource-constrained devices. This integration ensures data integrity, authentication, and resistance to spoofing and tampering attacks. A key innovation of this work is the modification of the standard PEGASIS protocol to include energy-aware chain construction and dynamic leader selection based on both residual and harvested energy levels. Besides, a Residual Energy-based Chain Leader Election Algorithm (RECLEA) is proposed to extend node lifetime and maintain balanced energy distribution throughout the network. In terms of latency, throughput, Packet Delivery Ratio (PDR), and energy economy, MATLAB simulation results demonstrate notable gains over the conventional PEGASIS and RECLEA protocols. Experimental findings show that the proposed smart energy-aware HMAC-BLAKE2s-based PEGASIS routing protocol provocatively developments performance. Energy consumption is decreased to 3.42 J, representing a reduction of approximately 27.5% associated to baseline PEGASIS (4.72 J). The Packet Delivery Ratio (PDR) progresses to 95.8%, reflecting an development of 10.7% over the baseline (85.1%), while network lifetime is extended to 1689 rounds, representing an progress of approximately 46.9% connected to 1150 rounds in conventional PEGASIS. Additionally, the integration of HMAC-BLAKE2s introduces less than 1% additional energy overhead, ensuring robust data authentication and integrity with negligible impact on overall network performance.