Minimizing Energy Consumption Using Unequal Clustering in Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) is becoming a very important area of research in today’s world and contributes a lot in the field of technology. Reducing energy consumption and improving the network lifetime is the key factor to be considered. In this paper, we propose a new protocol namely Minimizing Energy Consumption Using Unequal Clustering (MECUC). MECUC attempts to improve energy efficiency using duty cycling and unequal clustering concepts. The inclusion of duty cycling in MECUC is expected to provide a better balancing of energy amongst the sensor nodes. Selection of relay CH in MECUC is based on (i) distance to BS (ii) residual energy of the nodes and (iii) node proximity. Performances of MECUC are compared with the performances of the existing protocol EADUC and the obtained results show that operation of DTUCFA is found to be better than EADUC in terms of delay, energy consumption, packet loss ratio and packet received ratio.