An Energy Efficient Clustering Scheme in Wireless Sensor Networks

Data gathering is a common but critical operation in many applications of wireless sensor networks. Innovative techniques that improve energy efficiency to prolong the network lifetime are highly required. Clustering is an effective topology control approach in wireless sensor networks, which can increase network scalability and lifetime. In this paper, we propose a novel energy efficient clustering schema (EECS) for single-hop wireless sensor networks, which better suits the periodical data gathering applications. Our approach elects cluster heads with more residual energy in a autonomous manner through local radio communication with no iteration while achieving good cluster head distribution; further more, it introduces a novel distance-based method to balance the load among the cluster heads. Simulation results show that EECS prolongs the network lifetime significantly against the other clustering protocols such as LEACH and HEED.