An Energy Efficient Weight-Clustering Algorithm in Wireless Sensor Networks

In recent years, the wireless sensor networks (WSN) attracts increasing attention due to its bright application prospect in both military and civil fields. However, for the WSN is extremely energy limited, the traditional network routing protocols are not suitable to it. Energy conservation becomes a crucial problem in WSN routing protocol. Cluster-based routing protocols such as LEACH conserve energy by forming clusters which only cluster heads need to consume extra energy to perform data aggregation and transmit it to base station. Unfortunately, cluster formation not only dissipates lots of energy but also increases overhead. We propose an energy-efficient, weighted clustering algorithm which improves the cluster formation process of LEACH by taking residual energy, mutual position, workload balance and MAC functioning in to consideration. The algorithm is flexible and coefficients can be adjusted according to different networks. The simulation experiments demonstrate the proposed algorithm in this paper is better in performance than LEACH.