Abstract:The integrated pipe gallery is long and narrow.In order to address the problem of unbalanced energy consumption and short lifetime of the WSNs in the pipe gallery,a gradient-based unequal clustering routing protocol (GUCRP)for heterogeneous WSNs is proposed.The protocol adopts the way of flooding mechanism to establish virtual gradient partition,calculates the optimal number of cluster heads in each gradient and optimizes the clustering process.The residual energy of nodes is introduced into the election mechanism of cluster head,and the competition radius of cluster heads is controlled according to the heterogeneity of node energy to form unequal clustering.In data transmission phase,the next gradient optimal forwarding node is selected by combining the residual energy and the distance factor.Simulation results show that the protocol is superior to DEEC,LEACH-HC and OCRP in terms of network lifetime and energy consumption,and improves the “hot spot” problem of the network.It provides an effective solution for the construction of integrated pipe gallery wireless sensor network.