Balanced and Semi-Distributed Clustering Protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract

In Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs), energy saving is one of the most essential issues in designing because of the significant restricted power resources of the Sensor Nodes (SNs). Moreover, these nodes are deployed in remote or hostile environments. Clustering techniques gained widespread acceptance due to its characteristic of less energy exhaustion. Intra-cluster communication cost (Intra-cluster term), Inter-cluster communication cost (Inter-cluster term), and Cluster Size (CS) have a great effect on balancing and conserving energy within each cluster in the network. In fact, topology control help in balancing the communication load and preserve the energy of the nodes by reducing both terms and determining the optimal CS. Hence, it would majorly influence improving the lifetime of the network. In order to achieve this, Balanced and Semi-Distributed Clustering Protocol (BSDCP) is proposed, which is suitable for long-scale transmission in WSNs. It uses topology control to manage the convergent sensors within the sensing area and control on CS. Thus, the Intra-cluster term is minimized. Moreover, instead of using Direct Transmission (DT) to send data of Cluster Head (CH) to Base Station (BS), BSDCP uses Multi-Hop (MH) communication between high residual energy Cluster Heads (CHs) and try to reach BS with minimum energy cost. Hence, the Inter-cluster term is reduced. In addition, the Dijkstra algorithm is employed as an effective tool to search for the least cost path efficiently. The simulation results show the significant improvement of our proposal compared to other clustering protocols, and it has a more extended network lifetime and stability period.