Zone Based Routing Protocol (ZBRP) With Energy Conscious to Support Sustainable Agricultural IoT and Smart Farming Networks

Abstract

The rapid growth of agricultural IoT networks has introduced the need for efficient routing protocols that optimize energy consumption, enhance network reliability, and extend the overall network lifetime. Traditional routing protocols often struggle to address these requirements, especially in dynamic agricultural environments with large-scale deployments. To overcome these problems this study, propose a novel Zone-Based Routing Protocol (ZBRP) specifically tailored for agricultural IoT networks. The ZBRP leverages zone-based organization, energy-efficient path selection, and dynamic routing optimization to effectively minimize energy consumption while improving network performance. Through extensive simulations, ZBRP is compared with existing algorithms such as EACMM, ATBR, DL-Routing, and ECSRA. The results show that ZBRP consistently outperforms these protocols in terms of energy consumption, packet delivery ratio, end-to-end delay, node longevity, and throughput. Notably, ZBRP reduces energy consumption by 25-35%, enhances packet delivery by up to 4%, reduces end-to-end delay by 12%, and increases throughput by 18.75%. Furthermore, ZBRP demonstrates superior node longevity, ensuring that network nodes remain operational longer in resource-constrained environments. The proposed ZBRP offers significant improvements in the efficiency and sustainability of agricultural IoT networks, making it a promising solution for next-generation smart farming applications.