A novel energy efficient and reliable clustering algorithm in wireless sensor networks

Nodes in wireless sensor networks (WSN) may die easily either by running out of energy or being destroyed. Especially in clustered WSN, the destruction of cluster heads (CHs) can result in uselessness of all sensors in the cluster, thus may greatly affect the reliability of the whole network. The algorithm presented in this paper reduces the negative effect of cluster heads´ failures by setting CH-assistant nodes. The algorithm successfully balances the energy load of cluster heads to prolong the network lifetime and improves the networks´ reliability against intentional attack. Considering the energy limit of sensor nodes, we adopt an optimized transmission mode between the cluster head, CH-assistant node and the sink node to avoid the energy wastage caused by long distance transmission; thus prolong the lifetime of sensor networks. Finally, we give simulation results that demonstrate the characteristics of our algorithm.