An event-driven simulation for WSN clustering algorithm

Abstract

Objectives: The reduction of energy dissipation and the avoidance of unbalanced energy consumption have been always considered as crucial issues in WSN. However, evaluating the solutions for these issues requires the agility of performance analysis tool. Methods: This research presents an effort that encompasses the development of a general-purpose programming language based discrete-event simulation to analyze specifically energy consumption in WSN. The Energyaware Unequal Clustering Algorithm is used as a benchmark representative for the spectrum of WSN energy algorithms. The same domain with the aim of ensuring fairness is used in this study. The derivation of events, the event schedules and the time advancing mechanism are explicitly deliberated to enable the reproduction of the tools for extended cases. High emphasize is placed on the validation of the developed tool. The number of alive nodes and the distribution of dead nodes over the network are used as performance metrics to validate the developed tool. Findings: Analysis of the results has substantiated the proposed simulator as a member of the spectrum of analysis tools. Applications: As choosing simulation in the dynamic environment is challenging, thus, generic DES simulators is a good option, which can be applied in different domains and algorithms. Keywords: Clustering, Discrete Event Simulation, Network Lifetime, Performance Analysis, Wireless Sensor Network