Analysis of energy-efficient smart path optimization routing protocol for wireless sensor networks

• WSN enables energy-efficient data communication. • SPORT routing protocol chip simulated and analyzed on Virtex-5 FPGA. • Data communication achieves high throughput and PDR. • SPORT analysis reduces latency, improving scalability and performance in WSNs. Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are self-organizing systems consisting of numerous sensor nodes distributed over a geographic area to collect and transmit environmental data. They are increasingly used in industrial automation, military surveillance, environmental monitoring, and security applications because of their low cost, small form factor, and autonomous operation. However, as network size grows, congestion becomes a major challenge, leading to packet drops, retransmissions, longer delays, reduced throughput, and significant energy wastage. These issues are critical since sensor nodes have limited energy, memory, and bandwidth resources, and excessive retransmissions can drastically shorten network lifetime. To address these challenges, this paper proposes a Smart Path Optimization Routing Protocol (SPORT) aimed at achieving energy-efficient, scalable, and congestion-aware data transmission. The protocol integrates an intelligent path scheduling mechanism with FPGA-based implementation to minimize latency, enhance throughput, and maintain a high packet delivery ratio (PDR) across dynamic network conditions. Hardware synthesis and simulation were carried out using Xilinx ISE 14.7 on a Virtex-5 FPGA, showing significant improvements in delay, control overhead, and throughput compared to conventional approaches, with PDR values consistently near 1.000 for node clusters up to 200. SPORT demonstrates its suitability for large-scale, latency-sensitive WSN applications requiring reliable and energy-efficient data delivery.