Summary
In most wireless sensor network (WSN) applications, energy efficiency is a major issue and also choosing an energy efficient routing is crucial for maximizing the network lifetime. In this paper, an energy efficient optimal routing method is presented for WSN based on SAR‐MARKOV model. Initially, nodes in the network are effectively clustered utilizing k‐means clustering in terms of energy, message size, and packet size to obtain the most reliable model of clustering. Afterwards, a Search and Rescue (SAR) optimization approach is utilized for optimal cluster head selection which works based on the SAR behavior of humans to optimize the constraints. After the selection of cluster head, the Markov model provides an accurate prediction of the shortest path to achieve energy efficient optimal routing. This work is implemented in NS2 platform. The experimental results of the presented approach provide improved performance than the different existing routing techniques in terms of throughput, packet loss ratio, packet delivery ratio, network lifetime, jitter, energy consumption, time complexity, end‐to‐end delay, and bit error rate.