Energy conservative and coverage preservative clustering for wireless sensor networks

Clustering sensor nodes is an effective method to enhance network coverage and prolong network lifetime. In this paper we propose EAAFC (Energy Aware and Address Free Clustering), a clustering mechanism that analyses communication energy consumption and the impact of node failures on networks with different densities. The proposed algorithm aims at clustering nodes into groups with minimum number of cluster heads. EAAFC does not require global addressing or time synchronization to perform. Evaluation results show that EAAFC prolongs network´s lifetime while improves network coverage.