Maximizing Lifetime of Cluster-based WSN through Energy-Efficient Clustering Method

One of the important issues in wireless sensor network is inherent limited battery power within network sensor nodes. Minimizing energy dissipation and maximizing network lifetime are important issues in the design of sensor networks. There are various routing protocols like flat routing protocols, location-based, QoS based, hierarchical routing etc. in which optimal routing can be achieved. Hierarchical routing (cluster-based routing protocols) have shown to be more scalable and energy-aware. The basic idea of clustering is to use information aggregation mechanism in the cluster head to reduce the amount of data transmission, thereby, reduce the energy dissipation in communication. LEACH (low-energy adaptive clustering hierarchy) is well-known & divides the whole network into several clusters, and the run time of network is broken into many rounds. In each round, the nodes in a cluster contend to be cluster head according to a predefined criterion. Since CHs consume more energy in aggregating and routing data, it is important to have an energy-efficient mechanism for CHs’ election and rotation. Our proposed algorithm for cluster head selection is based on residual energy, distance & reliability. The main purpose of this paper is to develop a mechanism to increase the lifetime of sensor nodes controlling long distance communication, node balancing and efficient delivery of information.