Energy efficient fixed cluster architecture for heterogeneous WSNs

Abstract

Wireless sensor networks have great potential for use in organized urban setting like homes and industrial spaces. Clustered architectures provide an energy-efficient way of data collection and dissemination in a wireless sensor network. Commercial wireless sensor networks for smart home and industry applications also need to deploy a variety of sensors that differ from each other in terms of availability of energy source, power consumption during operation and data rates used for communication etc. Further, all the networks may need to grow in size to meet any future requirements. Most of the clustered architectures developed for sensor network deployment in open spaces (like battlefield surveillance, agricultural farms, forest areas etc.) make use of dynamic clusters to provide energy efficient operation. However, closed spaces like homes and industrial plants may not support dynamic clustering due to physical partitioning of available network space into rooms and workshops. Also, use of frequent re-clustering in a wireless sensor network makes network management difficult and causes additional energy expenditure during network operation. newline