SMA-WSN: Failure-Aware Slime-Mold-Inspired Clustering and Per-Hop Versus End-to-End Delivery Analysis in Agricultural Wireless Sensor Networks.

Authors

Messaoud Belloula, Souheila Bouam, Lyamine Guezouli, Djallel Eddine Boubiche, Homero Toral-Cruz, Rafael Sanchez-Lara, Rafael Martínez-Peláez, David Ernesto Troncoso Romero

Published in

Sensors (Basel, Switzerland). Volume 26. Issue 18. Sep 11, 2026. Epub Sep 11, 2026.

Abstract

Wireless sensor networks in agricultural fields face abrupt node failures from environmental stress and physical damage, yet most clustering protocols assume fault-free operation. This paper proposes SMA-WSN, a failure-aware clustering protocol inspired by the Slime Mold Algorithm, selecting cluster heads via a tri-objective fitness that combines residual energy, base-station proximity, and local coverage. Evaluated in NS-3.47 against 11 protocols over six agricultural topology archetypes-spatial node-layout patterns derived from Algerian field geometries and densities, not biophysical canopy or soil-moisture propagation models-and five failure rates (18,000 runs, 50 seeds), SMA-WSN achieves the highest per-hop delivery ratio at every failure rate and ranks first overall on that metric, with its largest margins on the heterogeneous, oasis, and sparse-Saharan terrains (T4-T6). We also report an end-to-end delivery ratio, counting a datum only when it reaches the base station: under that stricter definition, all 12 protocols change rank, and SMA-WSN places seventh. We report both and treat the divergence between them as a result in its own right. SMA-WSN achieves the highest per-hop PDR while remaining statistically tied with the best protocols in energy fairness (Jain index 0.922, within one confidence half-width of the leaders GWO-LEACH, PSO-LEACH, and FGO-QL). An ablation over the three fitness terms and their weights shows this advantage is robust to objective weighting and arises from the SMA selection dynamics rather than any single fitness term: no term, including coverage, is individually decisive, so the advantage does not depend on a finely tuned weighting. Disabling the stochastic wrap phase, by contrast, costs 11.4 percentage points of per-hop PDR, identifying it as the mechanism actually responsible for the gain. On First Node Death under failure, SMA-WSN is mid-field rather than dominant; we report this honestly and discuss it as an open question for follow-up work distinguishing energy-exhaustion deaths from abrupt hardware failures.

PMID:
42817344
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 01 Oct 2026.

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