## 6 Simulation Results and Discussions
### Simulation Scenarios and Results
#### 6.3.5 Simulation Scenario 5: Average Delay Evaluation  
Figure 14 presents an in-depth comparative analysis of the average delay observed in the proposed protocol versus existing protocols. The results unequivocally demonstrate that the proposed protocol, whether employed with or without multi-hop routing, delivers superior performance, achieving the lowest average delay across the board. This remarkable enhancement stems from the sophisticated and adaptive algorithms embedded within the proposed protocol, as discussed earlier, enabling it to outperform its counterparts by a significant margin. This metric collectively underscores the protocol's ability to redefine delay performance benchmarks in IoT networks, solidifying its utility in latency-critical applications.  
\begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c c c} \hline \hline
**Items** & **Protocols Considered in Comparision** & **Throughput (\(\times 10^{8}\))** & **Improvement Ratio for the Proposed Protocol Without** & **Improvement Ratio for the Proposed Protocol with** **Multi-Hop Routing** \\ \hline \multirow{4}{*}{Scenario \#1 Number of SNs: 100 Number of DFHs: 100 Network area: 100 \(\times\) 100 m\({}^{2}\) Proposed protocol without routing & PSO-EEC & 4.3543 & 51\% & 66\% \\ \cline{2-5}  & LDIWPSO & 4.5695 & 44\% & 58\% \\ \cline{2-5}  & OFCA & 4.8841 & 35\% & 48\% \\ \cline{2-5}  & NPSOP & 4.9338 & 33\% & 47\% \\ \cline{2-5}  & Proposed protocol without routing & 6.5752 & NA & 10\% \\ \cline{2-5}  & Proposed protocol with multi-hop routing & 7.2344 & NA & NA \\ \hline \multirow{4}{*}{Scenario \#1 Number of SNs: 100 Number of DFHs: 55 Network area: 100 \(\times\) 100 m\({}^{2}\) Proposed protocol without routing & 6.5752 & NA & 10\% \\ \cline{2-5}  & Proposed protocol with multi-hop routing & 7.2344 & NA & NA \\ \cline{2-5}  & PSO-EEC & 2.8610 & 89\% & 101\% \\ \cline{2-5}  & LDIWPSO & 3.5661 & 51\% & 61\% \\ \cline{2-5}  & OFCA & 3.4373 & 57\% & 67\% \\ \cline{2-5}  & NPSOP & 3.8712 & 40\% & 48\% \\ \cline{2-5}  & Proposed protocol without routing & 5.4008 & NA & 6\% \\ \cline{2-5}  & Proposed protocol with multi-hop routing & 5.7432 & NA & NA \\ \hline \multirow{4}{*}{Scenario \#2 Number of SNs: 300 Number of DFHs: 55 Network area: 300 \(\times\) 300 m\({}^{2}\) Proposed protocol without routing & PSO-EEC & 2.5288 & 114\% & 122\% \\ \cline{2-5}  & Proposed protocol with multi-hop routing & 3.1322 & 72\% & 83\% \\ \cline{2-5}  & PSO-EEC & 2.4949 & 116\% & 130\% \\ \cline{2-5}  & LDIWPSO & 3.2475 & 66\% & 77\% \\ \cline{2-5}  & NPSOP protocol without routing & 5.4008 & NA & 6\% \\ \cline{2-5}  & Proposed protocol with multi-hop routing & 5.7432 & NA & NA \\ \hline \multirow{4}{*}{Scenario \#2 Number of SNs: 300 Number of DFHs: 55 Network area: 300 \(\times\) 300 m\({}^{2}\) Proposed protocol without routing & PSO-EEC & 2.5288 & 114\% & 122\% \\ \cline{2-5}  & LDIWPSO & 3.1322 & 72\% & 83\% \\ \cline{2-5}  & OFCA & 2.4949 & 116\% & 130\% \\ \cline{2-5}  & NPSOP & 3.2475 & 66\% & 77\% \\ \cline{2-5}  & Proposed protocol without routing & 5.4008 & NA & 6\% \\ \cline{2-5}  & Proposed protocol with multi-hop routing & 5.7432 & NA & NA \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}  
* NA: means not available, as the protocol is compared with itself, which is not meaningful.  
\end{table}
Table 14: Comparative analysis of improvement ratios: throughput in the proposed protocol versus counterparts.