An immune chaotic adaptive evolutionary algorithm for energy-efficient clustering management in LPWSN

Abstract

Recently, low power wireless sensor networks (LPWSNs) have been widely used in the military and education. However, the lifetime of LPWSN is affected by the energy of the sensor, so the clustering design has received a lot of attention. In this study, the problem of designing optimal clustering for LPWSN is formulated as a cluster head selection problem, considering energy, which is an NP-hard problem. Therefore, a new structural model of the clustering design problem is constructed. This model can represent the process of sensor node clustering and information transfer. In this paper, a new immune chaotic adaptive evolutionary algorithm (ICAEA) is proposed and used in the clustering design of LPWSNs to obtain a better cluster head selection scheme. Then we design new advanced operators, such as immune operator and chaotic operator, which improve the convergence speed of the algorithm on the basis of evolutionary algorithm (EA). Moreover, ICAEA avoids local optima by introducing an adaptive operator, improves the convergence accuracy of the algorithm, and improves the performance of the optimization. Simulations are conducted to determine the performance improvements of ICAEA in terms of network lifetime and energy consumption compared to the latest clustering methods of R-LEACH, Q-LEACH, and ICCHR. The experimental results show that the proposed ICAEA algorithm outperforms RLEACH, Q-LEACH and ICCHR in terms of network lifetime under multiple identical experimental conditions. Moreover, ICAEA consumes less energy than R-LEACH, Q-LEACH and ICCHR in terms of system energy consumption.