An Energy-Efficient, Load Balanced Distributed Clustering and Routing Protocol for Large Scale WSNs

Abstract

A wireless network consisting of a large number of small sensors with low-power transceivers can be an effective tool for gathering data in a variety of environments. These sensor nodes have some constraints due to limited energy, storage capacity and computing power. The energy consumed to route data from the sensor node to its destination raises as a critical issue in designing wireless sensor network routing protocols. In order to prolong the lifetime of wireless sensor networks, this study presents a multi-hop routing protocol with distributed clustering (ELDRL). First, in order to overcome the defect that the clusters distribute unevenly, ELDRL selects nodes as a cluster-head with regard to neighbor cluster-heads. Second, it partitions the network into different layers of clusters. Cluster heads in each layer cooperates with the adjacent layer to transmit sensor’s data to the base station. ELDRL spreads the workload across the sensor network, load balancing reduces hot spots in the sensor network and increases the energy lifetime of the sensor network. Moreover, the protocol not only increases the scalability but also decreases the traffic of WSN. Simulation results show that the scheme is more efficient compared with LEACH.