Cost- and reward-based clustering for wireless sensor networks: A performance tradeoff

In wireless sensor networks, energy conservation is one of the main issues since sensor nodes have limited energy source. Clustering came as an effort to reduce the energy consumption of sensor nodes. Besides energy conservation, the sensor nodes should also deliver their data to the sink effectively. In this paper, a cost- and reward-based clustering (CORE) algorithm using game theory is proposed. In the cluster head selection, CORE considers the cost and reward of being a cluster head. The proposed CORE gives a performance tradeoff between energy consumption and the amount of data sent to the sink. Note that the energy consumption determines network lifetime. As a result, CORE is between probability-based clustering and clustered routing of selfish sensors (CROSS) with regard to performance.