Abstract
Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are used for recording the information from the physical surroundings and transmitting the gathered records to a principal location via extensively disbursed sensor nodes. The proliferation of sensor devices and advances in size, deployment costs, and user-friendly interfaces have spawned numerous WSN applications. The WSN should use a routing protocol to send information to the sink over a low-cost link. One of the foremost vital problems is the restricted energy of the sensing element and, therefore, the high energy is consumed throughout the time. An energy-efficient routing may increase the lifetime by consuming less energy. Taking this into consideration, this paper provides a multi-criteria clustering and optimal bio-inspired routing algorithmic rule to reinforce network lifetime, to increase the operational time of WSN-based applications and make robust clusters. Clustering is a good methodology of information aggregation that increases the lifetime by group formation. Multi-criteria clustering is used to select the optimal cluster head (CH). After proper selection of the CH, moth flame and salp swarm optimization algorithms are combined to analyze the quality route for transmitting information from the CH to the sink and expand the steadiness of the network. The proposed method is analyzed and contrasted with previous techniques, with parameters such as energy consumption, throughput, end-to-end delay, latency, lifetime, and packet delivery rate. Consumption of energy is minimized by up to 18.6% and network life is increased up to 6% longer compared to other routing protocols.