Track-Sector Clustering for Energy Efficient Routing in Wireless Sensor Networks

Energy conservation is one of the most discussed issues in wireless sensor network (WSN) application and protocol designs. Conventional routing protocols such as LEACH, PEGASIS, and concentric clustering scheme (CCS) try to minimize energy consumption, but the consumed energy is still high because of redundant data transmission and various distances between head nodes and base station (BS). In this paper, we propose a new routing protocol, track-sector clustering (TSC) over WSN. In the proposed TSC scheme, we divide the network into concentric circular tracks and triangular sectors. This division of tracks and sectors helps to reduce the energy consumption by minimizing redundant data transmission and providing shortest distance between head nodes and the BS. For the formation of tracks and sectors in the network, the proposed TSC requires additional computations. However, all he computations for the formation of tracks and sectors are carried out in the BS just at the beginning of the network setup. Therefore, we can achieve the goal of energy efficiency without additional energy consumption of the distributed nodes after network setup process in our proposed TSC protocol. Our simulation results showed that the proposed TSC scheme is about 9 times, 2.5 times, and 2.3 times efficient in conserving energy as compared to LEACH, PEGASIS, and CCS respectively.