Cluster Head Selection in Wireless Sensor Networks under Fuzzy Environment

Clustering is one of the important methods for prolonging the network lifetime in wireless sensor networks (WSNs). It involves grouping of sensor nodes into clusters and electing cluster heads (CHs) for all the clusters. CHs collect the data from respective cluster’s nodes and forward the aggregated data to base station. A major challenge in WSNs is to select appropriate cluster heads. In this paper, we present a fuzzy decision-making approach for the selection of cluster heads. Fuzzy multiple attribute decision-making (MADM) approach is used to select CHs using three criteria including residual energy, number of neighbors, and the distance from the base station of the nodes. The simulation results demonstrate that this approach is more effective in prolonging the network lifetime than the distributed hierarchical agglomerative clustering (DHAC) protocol in homogeneous environments.