QEGWO: Energy-Efficient Clustering Approach for Industrial Wireless Sensor Networks Using Quantum-Related Bioinspired Optimization

Compared with conventional wireless sensor networks (WSNs), industrial WSNs (IWSNs) have stricter requirements in real-time data transmission, energy consumption, and energy uniformity. To fulfill these requirements, a new energy-efficient clustering approach using quantum-related bioinspired optimization, i.e., quantum elite gray wolf optimization (QEGWO), is proposed to improve the performance of IWSNs. Innovatively, a new quantum operator, including quantum probability amplitude, quantum rotation gate, and quantum NOT gate, is designed in QEGWO to enhance its global search capability. This quantum operator need not query the quantum rotation angle table in updating quantum probability amplitude with the quantum rotation gate, which reduces the computational complexity of introducing quantum optimization into the clustering problem of IWSNs. Moreover, to enhance the convergence performance of the clustering algorithm, a multielite strategy is proposed to preserve the historical optimal individuals generated in the iterative process by establishing a dynamic elite pool. Compared with the state-of-the-art clustering approaches, extensive simulations in four different scenarios are carried out, and the results demonstrate that the proposed QEGWO outperforms other comparison approaches in delay, energy consumption, and energy uniformity.