Energy-Balanced Separating Algorithm for Cluster-Based Data Aggregation in Wireless Sensor Networks

Clustering provides an effective way to prolong the lifetime of wireless sensor networks. However, the head node may die much faster than other nodes due to its overburden. In this paper, we design a method to mitigate the uneven energy dissipation problem. Considering the relaying load undertaken by each cluster, we use the network topology and energy consumption to calculate a cluster radius for obtaining the intercluster energy balancing. A new cluster-leader election algorithm is proposed wherein the task of a single cluster head is separated to two nodes so that the critical nodes in each cluster will not exhaust their power so quickly. Furthermore, cross-level data transmission is used to prolong network lifetime. Extensive simulation experiments are carried out to evaluate the method with several performance criteria. Our simulation results show that this method obtains satisfactory performance on balancing energy dissipation and prolonging the networks lifetime. © 2013 Shuai Fu et al.