## 5 The Proposed Protocol  
One of the main factors influencing how long a network lasts is how well a node maintains its energy. The network would fail to achieve its targeted operating needs in a shorter amount of time if its rate of energy consumption increased. The proposed protocol may make sure that PDFHs with more energy are chosen by basing the PDFH selection process on the RE of SNs. This choice criterion may increase the network's overall stability and lengthen its duration of use. Moreover, the PDFH selection procedure can reduce energy consumption by taking the distance to the sink into account. This method guarantees that SNs closer to the sink are prioritized as PDFHs, reducing the need for energy-consuming long-distance transfers. Furthermore, another critical component in PDFH selection is the average distance between DFGMs, which is considered in the proposed protocol. In conclusion, it seems that the proposed protocol presents a viable option for network-wide energy consumption optimization. Through the consideration of node-to-node energy consumption balance, the proposed protocol might potentially prolong the life of IoT networks and lessen early PDFH death. Moreover, they select PDFH by applying the MPA to calculate the DFFF. The substantial interest in MPA within the research community can be attributed to several factors, including its simplicity, applicability, realistic runtime performance, rapid convergence rate, high effectiveness, and capability to address continuous, multi-objective, and binary optimization problems more efficiently than other established algorithms in the field. To emphasize the effectiveness of MPA, we presented its initial application within an IoT domain directly relevant to this research, along with some preliminary results [50; 51]. A key differentiator lies in the use of distinct fitness functions: one study applied a three-dimensional fitness function [50], while another used a five-dimensional fitness function [51]. For the proposed protocol without routing, following the PDFH selection process, SNs send their data to their selected PDFH, which aggregates the received data with its own data and then transmits it directly to the sink node, as shown in Figure 1a in the case of the proposed protocol without routing. However, in the case of the proposed protocol with multi-hop routing, PDFH sends the data to PR based on the RDFCF, as demonstrated in Figure 1b. This section provides a comprehensive overview of the algorithms considered to enhance the performance of the proposed protocol. Specifically, Section 5.1 elucidates the method for dividing the network area, while Section 5.2 offers an in-depth explanation of how the MPA is used to select a PDFH, FSDFH, and SSDFH, while Section 5.3 addresses the techniques employed to avoid intra- and inter-DFG interference. In Section 5.4, data transmission using multi-hop routing and innovative RDFCF is demonstrated thoroughly. The communication overhead is presented in Section 5.5. Finally, Section 5.6 deals with the major network impairments.  
Figure 3: Breaking down the operational lifetime of the IoT network in the proposed protocol with multi-hop routing.