Energy-Efficient Cluster-Head Rotation in Beacon-Enabled IEEE 802.15.4 Networks

Wireless sensor networks that use slotted, beacon-enabled IEEE 802.15.4 standard are often implemented using clustering with randomized sleep of ordinary nodes to extend the network lifetime. To reduce the imbalance of power consumption between cluster-head and ordinary nodes, we propose a fair and efficient cluster-head rotation protocol with virtually zero overhead and no dead time. Through Markov chain modeling and probabilistic analysis, we show that the proposed approach achieves extremely good balance of nodes´ lifetime and optimal network lifetime in maximin sense, outperforming other approaches that use TDMA access.