Multilevel Hierarchical Clustering protocol for wireless sensor networks

Abstract

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) have a lot of various and important applications. Designing WSNs faces a lot of challenges; the most important one is the energy conservation. Clustering is one way used to reduce energy consumption in WSNs. In this paper, we introduce the Multilevel Hierarchical Clustering (MLHC) algorithm, which is a new routing protocol that reduce the energy consumption in heterogeneous WSNs. MLHC is a cluster based routing protocol which employs clustering of WSNs more than one time every round. After the first clustering takes place, the heads of the clusters forms a higher level of clustering with each other. The heads of the second level of clusters can communicate with the Base Station (BS). Simulations show that MLHC reduce energy dissipation and prolong the life time of the overall network compared with other existing protocols. Also MLHC increase the stability region (time from the starting of network until the death of first node).