Improving lifetime of large-scale Wireless Sensor Networks through heterogeneity

In last few years, there has been a growing interest in the area of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs). Now a day´s WSNs are being deployed in large sensing areas for real life applications. As sensor networks has limited and non-rechargeable energy resources, prolonging the lifetime of WSNs is a great issue. Some sensor nodes of comparatively high energy can be used (i.e. making the WSNs heterogeneous in terms of energy) to prolong the lifetime of WSNs. In this paper we propose an energy efficient protocol to prolong the lifetime of WSN by energy consumption through heterogeneity. The proposed approach selects cluster heads based on residual energy of sensor nodes. Simulation results demonstrate that heterogeneity in terms of energy of sensor nodes can improve lifetime of WSNs. Proposed protocol is also compared with LEACH, a previously existing clustering protocol for homogeneous WSNs.