An energy efficient algorithm for cluster-head selection in WSNs

In Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs), recharging node batteries may be inconvenient or impossible. There are several different approaches to overcome this problem. LEACH (Low-Energy Adaptive Clustering Hierarchy) is a well known algorithm whose best advantage is that each node makes its decision about whether to be a cluster-head independently, but it cannot guarantee an even energy load distribution. To over come this problem, we should consider the remaining energy of each node and the average residual energy of its neighboring nodes. However, this makes the nodes to be dependent on each other. For this reason, in this paper, we propose an energy efficient cluster-head selection algorithm, which is an extension to the LEACH. Our new algorithm is based on the differentiation of each node´s energy. In the proposed algorithm, each node cares about its neighboring nodes, without getting any information from them. Simulation results show that our proposed algorithm could better balance the load and prolong the lifetime of the network by about 10% compared with LEACH.