An Intelligent Clustering-Based Routing Protocol (CRP-GR) for 5G-Based Smart Healthcare Using Game Theory and Reinforcement Learning

With advantages such as short and long transmission ranges, D2D communication, low latency, and high node density, the 5G communication standard is a strong contender for smart healthcare. Smart healthcare networks based on 5G are expected to have heterogeneous energy and mobility, requiring them to adapt to the connected environment. As a result, in 5G-based smart healthcare, building a routing protocol that optimizes energy consumption, reduces transmission delay, and extends network lifetime remains a challenge. This paper presents a clustering-based routing protocol to improve the Quality of services (QoS) and energy optimization in 5G-based smart healthcare. QoS and energy optimization are achieved by selecting an energy-efficient clustering head (CH) with the help of game theory (GT) and best multipath route selection with reinforcement learning (RL). The cluster head selection is modeled as a clustering game with a mixed strategy considering various attributes to find equilibrium conditions. The parameters such as distance between nodes, the distance between nodes and base station, the remaining energy and speed of mobility of the nodes were used for cluster head (CH) selection probability. An energy-efficient multipath routing based on reinforcement learning (RL) having (Q-learning) is proposed. The simulation result shows that our proposed clustering-based routing approach improves the QoS and energy optimization compared to existing approaches. The average performances of the proposed schemes CRP-GR and CRP-G are 78% and 71%, respectively, while the existing schemes, such as FBCFP, TEEN and LEACH have average performances of 63%, 48% and 35% accordingly.