Balanced Energy Efficient Clustering Methods for Heterogeneous Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract

Sensor networks normally contain about hundreds to thousands of sensing nodes. It is desirable to make these nodes available at an affordable price and energy-efficient. One of the challenges faced by WSNs is the power management issue. As sensors have limited energy, they need to be used judiciously so that WSNs have extended lifetime. Clustering is one of the successful techniques to improve the lifetime of a WSN. In this technique, a network field is divided into sub-regions, called clusters. The communications between entities on a network are governed by protocols. Network protocols must be designed to achieve fault tolerance in case of individual node failure(s) and to minimize energy consumption. Moreover, since the limited wireless channel bandwidth is shared among all sensors in the network, routing protocols should be able to perform a local collaboration to reduce bandwidth requirements. To meet this criterion, a protocol namely Low-Energy Adaptive Clustering Hierarchy (LEACH) protocol was developed in the past. It is shown that LEACH outperforms classical clustering algorithms since it uses adaptive clusters, rotates the role of CHs and allows energy requirements of the system to be distributed among all sensors in the network. But, when a CH dies in a LEACH environment, that cluster will become inactive since data gathered at that CH will not be sent to the BS. It is assumed that the BS is not energy limited and hence the dimensions of the field and the coordinates of the BS are fixed newline