Load-Aware Cluster-Head Rotation in Wireless Sensor Network

Abstract

In a wireless sensor network (WSN), few to thousands of sensors monitor information about nearby events and cooperatively transmit it to the base station for further processing. The sensors do their duty with a finite energy source, and in extreme conditions, the replacement or recharge of this energy is not possible always. Therefore, it is extremely important for every sensor to efficiently use its finite energy to make the network durable. Clustering based protocols are widely used in the literature as an energy saving scheme. In a cluster, the head node consumes more energy than regular member nodes. The head node not only senses the data from its surroundings but also receives the data from associated members, aggregates the received data with its own data, and transmits the aggregated data to the base station. The existing clustering protocols use cluster-head rotation and re-clustering approaches to evenly distribute the energy-intensive load of cluster-head among all the member nodes and all the nodes of the network, respectively. This paper proposes a mechanism that considers the current energy load of head node to determine the dynamic threshold for cluster-head rotation to minimize the premature death of cluster-heads. The proposed cluster-head rotation mechanism is compared with the other version of the proposed protocol where cluster-head is rotated based on a static threshold on residual energy of cluster-head. The results show that the proposed rotation mechanism outperforms its comparatives.