# Energy Efficient Routing Protocol for an IoT-Based WSN System to Detect Forest Fires
## 1 Introduction
The WSN model is used to measure the weather conditions around an active fire. In FireWxNet [26], the authors discussed the important aspects of modelling forest fires based on the FireWeather Index (FWI) System. The model proposed in the work uses a WSN for the early detection of forest fires. In the work proposed in [27], the authors used mixed learning techniques and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) to detect forest fires early. The clustering and/or routing techniques used in many recent forest fire detection models are not very energy-efficient. Many fire detection models do not use any clustering technique for data collection. Moreover, many of them do not use multi-hop paths for sending data packets to the sink node. The proposed model uses an energy-efficient clustering and routing technique for collecting data and sending them to the BS. The main contributions of the paper are highlighted below. 1. This paper discusses a TDMA-based MAC protocol named Energy Efficient Routing Protocol (EERP) that uses energy-efficient clustering and routing algorithms. EERP employs a novel CH selection mechanism to ensure that all CHs are uniformly distributed in the network. To communicate with the CHs in the network, the BS creates multi-hop paths. So, the CHs do not have to communicate with the BS using high-power signals (long-range transmissions) that are energy exhaustive. To ensure that the load is distributed evenly across all the nodes in the network, an efficient CH rotation mechanism is also used. 2. EERP considers three important parameters to do its job - Distance to the Event (DE), Threshold Energy (TE), and Verification Period (VP). The DE (predefined value in meters) ensures that only the nodes in the proximity of an event report it. The sensor nodes located more than DE meters away from the event do not report the event to their CHs. The TE value ensures that sensor nodes with low energy levels do not become CHs. The VP is a small time duration in each slot in which a CH checks the medium for any signal from the slot owner. The VP contributes to reducing idle listening in CHs. 3. The proposed model assumes that the target area (forest area) is composed of small sub-areas or grids. In each grid, one CH is appointed to collect data from the rest of the nodes in the grid. These data are sent to the BS via one of the multi-hop routes established during the cluster formation phase. As WSNs are usually deployed to monitor very large forest areas, single-hop transmissions to the BS can be very costly. 4. In the result section, the performance of EERP is compared with that of some existing energy-efficient TDMA-based MAC protocols. The simulation results prove that the proposed model performs better in reducing the energy consumption in sensor nodes and extending the lifetime of WSNs. The remaining sections of the article are arranged as follows. Section 2 discusses some generic purpose WSN models, designed to extend the lifetime of WSNs. This section also discusses some recently proposed models, designed specifically for forest fire detection. Section 3 describes the working of the proposed model in detail. Section 4 compares the performance of the proposed model with that of some existing TDMA-based MAC protocols in different scenarios. In Section 5, we do a comprehensive comparative analysis of all the protocols simulated in Section 4. Section 6 concludes the paper and highlights the modifications that can be done to enhance the performance of the model.