An Overlapping Clustering Approach for Routing in Wireless Sensor Networks

The design and analysis of routing algorithm is an important issue in wireless sensor networks (WSNs). Most traditional geographical routing algorithms cannot achieve good performance in duty-cycled networks. In this paper, we propose a k-connected overlapping clustering approach with energy awareness, namely, k-OCHE, for routing in WSNs. The basic idea of this approach is to select a cluster head by energy availability (EA) status. The k-OCHE scheme adopts a sleep scheduling strategy of CKN, where neighbors will remain awake to keep it k connected, so that it can balance energy distributions well. Compared with traditional routing algorithms, the proposed k-OCHE approach obtains a balanced load distribution, consequently a longer network lifetime, and a quicker routing recovery time. © 2013 Zhenquan Qin et al.