# Energy Efficient Routing Protocol in Sensor Networks Using Genetic Algorithm
## 1 Introduction  
There are several types of wireless networks such as Mobile Ad-hoc Networks (MANETs) and wireless sensor networks (WSNs). In these networks, there is no infrastructure where the network is a set of multiple hop wireless nodes that communicate with other nodes without any centralized administrator. MANETs and mobile sensor networks permit self-organized connectivity [1] and each node communicates with other nodes directly or indirectly through intermediate nodes. In this regard, several issues should be considered such as multi-node routing, resources availability, and topology change. Therefore, a routing protocol in mobile networks must meet all these challenges to fulfill a high-performance requirement needed to achieve efficient data communication [2]. There are two main approaches for routing protocols: proactive and reactive protocols. In proactive protocols, mobile nodes must complete their routing tables by exchanging information about the network topology among the nodes. Proactive routing is also recognized by a table-driven routing because it manages routes to the final destination whether these routes are required or not [3]. Therefore, when there is a need for a route to a receiver, the path information is promptly available. In this proactive category, sending data will consume an obvious amount of energy while updated information is sent out unnecessarily when there is no data transmission. Accordingly, mobile nodes have inadequate power and their lifetime diminishes. On the other hand, in the reactive or on-demand routing approach, it has less routing overhead because it is not required a route management when there is no data transmission. In this case, routing data are reduced which in turn would minimize the traffic problems and cost. Frequent node mobility is one of the challenges where the route may be broken and the end-to-end communication is terminated. In this case of node movement, the network will entirely get interrupted and consume more of the remaining energy. Additionally, having overload traffic requires an excessive amount of energy and also would diminish the network performance in terms of quality-of-service parameters. Reactive protocols consume less power; however, in case of route loss, these protocols start a new discoveryprocess to search for an alternative route. Link failure also increases the load in the network and leads to a wastethe energy during the route discovery process. These all will result in a degradation of the network performance through increasing the load, reducing the throughput and hence the packet delivery ratio. Therefore, it is desired to develop a mechanism that uses less amount of energy and accordingly improves the performance. For efficient energy utilization at mobile nodes, the intensive study took place particularly to extend the lifetime of the network [4; 5]. Ad-hoc on-demand multi-path distance vector (AOMDV) is a well-known routing protocol that selects routes based on the minimum number of hops. AOMDV provides alternative routes in case of nodes failure or channels disconnection and as a result, it is not needed to go through the route discovery phase and hence this would reduce the latency and maximize the throughput. On the contrary, if the route is broken for a node or a link defect in case of a single path routing approach, the data communication will be aborted and finding another route process should be triggered [6] and this, in turn, degrades the network performance. However, the AOMDV algorithm does not consider the availability of the node's energy. In other words, a node might lose the power of its battery during a data communication which would consequently interrupt and this should switch to another available route. Routing algorithms based on saving energy were considered in separate studies where the cost was the main concern in [7] while in [8] the solution is complex and takes extended processing time.