2011, COMMUNE Conference on Advancements in Communication, Computing and Signal Processing

Energy Efficient Clustering Scheme for Wireless

Sensor Networks
Puneet Azad1, Brahmjit Singh2
1
Department of ECE, Maharaja Surajmal Institute of Technology, IP University, Delhi
2
School of Information & Communication Technology, Gautam Buddha University, Greater Noida

Abstract -Wireless Sensor Network has been one of the key areas for main goal is to use the energy of the nodes efficiently and
research in recent years. A major issue in these networks is conservation performing data aggregation to decrease the number of
of energy of the tiny nodes placed for monitoring physical or
environmental conditions of an area. In this paper, a new Energy efficient transmitted messages to the sink and transmission distance of
Clustering algorithm is designed to improve the network lifetime and the sensor nodes.
decrease the energy consumption of the nodes have been presented. The
entire physical area is divided into a set of clusters with each group Low-energy adaptive clustering hierarchy (LEACH) [2] is
having a cluster head responsible for data transmission and reception
from the individual nodes of its group. Finally, the simulation results the most popular distributed cluster-based routing protocols in
shows that our proposed clustering approach is more effective in wireless sensor networks. LEACH randomly selects few nodes
prolonging the network lifetime compared with the existing protocols. as cluster heads and rotates this role to balance the energy
dissipation of the sensor nodes in the networks. The cluster
I. INTRODUCTION head nodes fuse and aggregate data arriving from nodes from
every cluster and send an aggregated data to the sink in order
Recent advances in micro-electromechanical systems and to reduce the amount of data and transmission of the
low power digital electronics have led to the development of duplicated data. Data collection is centralized to sink and
micro-sensors having sensing, processing and communication performed periodically. When clusters are being created, each
capabilities equipped with a power unit. These sensors are node decides whether to become cluster head or not depending
randomly deployed down in a remote location for sensing the upon a probability. In LEACH, the optimal number of cluster
ambient conditions such as temperature, humidity, lightening heads is estimated to be about 5% of the total number of
conditions, pressure, noise levels etc. [1,12]. They are also nodes. All the nodes will find their nearest cluster head and
used for wide variety of applications such as Multimedia will send their data in their time slot in each round.
Surveillance [13], Storage of potential relevant activities such
as thefts, car accidents, traffic violations and Health and Home EEHC [3] adopt the heterogeneity of the nodes in terms of
applications. The wireless sensor network consists of a large their initial energy i.e. a percentage of nodes are equipped
number of sensor nodes with limited power capacity and a with more energy than others. In order to improve the lifetime
sink called BASE STATION, responsible for collecting data and performance of the network system, this paper reports on
from the nodes. the weighted probability of the election of cluster heads [10],
which is calculated as a function of as a function of increased
One of the key issues of these nodes is the consumption of energy. Performance is evaluated against LEACH using ns-2
energy while collecting data from the environment and simulator and it shows that the lifetime of the network has
transmitting it to the sink. Our goal is to design an efficient extended by 10% as compared with LEACH in the presence of
clustering protocol for extending the lifetime of the network. same setting of powerful nodes in a network.
CLUSTERING is the assignment of a set of observations into
subsets or groups called CLUSTERS, having some similarity DHAC [4] is a hierarchical agglomerative clustering
or dissimilarity. In WSN, these sensor nodes are organized algorithm, which adopts a bottom-up clustering approach by
into clusters of unequal sizes based on their location, signal grouping similar nodes together before the cluster head is
strength or connectivity etc. The clustering technique can also selected. This algorithm avoids re-clustering and achieves
used to perform data aggregation, which combines the data uniform energy dissipation through the whole network. The
from source nodes into a small set of meaningful information. clusters are formed on the basis of quantitative (location of
nodes, received signal strength) as well as qualitative data
The rest of the paper is organized as follows. Section 2 (connectivity). After the formation of clusters using some well
highlights the background and related work, section 3 briefly known hierarchical methods like SLINK, CLINK, UPGMA,
illustrates homogeneous and heterogeneous models used in and WPGAM, the cluster heads are selected having minimum
WSN, section 4 presents the proposed protocol, section 5 id in the group. The simulation results show the improved
presents the simulation and performance results and section 6 lifetime of the network as compared to LEACH.
presents the conclusions.
An energy-efficient protocol [5] that can guarantee the
II. BACKGROUND reliable transmission for heterogeneous wireless sensor
networks is designed to improve the clustering scheme in
Several protocols have been developed till now to improve which the cluster head selection algorithm is based on a
the lifetime of the network using clustering techniques. The method of energy dissipation forecast and clustering

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COMMUNE CACCS 2011
management (EDFCM). EDFCM considers the residual Rotating the cluster heads conserve the energy being sent for
energy and energy consumption rate in all nodes. Simulation transmission and reception.
results in MATLAB show that EDFCM balances the energy
consumption better than the conventional routing protocols In Heterogeneous model, a percentage of the population of
and prolongs the lifetime of networks obviously. sensor nodes is equipped with more energy resources than the
normal sensor nodes in the network. Cluster heads will be
An energy efficient multi-hop clustering algorithm [6] is selected from those nodes, which have more energy than
designed for reducing the energy consumption and prolonging others.
the system lifetime using an analytical clustering model with
100
one-hop distance and clustering angle. The cluster head will
continue to act as the local control center and will not be 90
replaced by another node until its continuous working times 80
reach the optimum value. With the mechanism, the frequency Normal Node
of updating cluster head and the energy consumption for 70

establishing new cluster head can be reduced. The simulation 60

results in MATLAB demonstrate that the clustering algorithm

100 m
50
can effectively reduce the energy consumption and increase
the system lifetime. 40 Advanced Node
30 Sink
DEEC [7] is an energy efficient clustering protocol in
20
which the cluster-heads are elected by a probability based on
the ratio between residual energy of each node and the average 10
energy of the network. The nodes with high initial and
0
residual energy will have more chances to be the cluster-heads 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100

than the nodes with low energy. The simulation results show 100 m
that DEEC achieves longer lifetime and more effective
Fig.1 Node placement in Heterogeneous Model
messages than current important clustering protocols in
heterogeneous environments.
IV. THE PROPOSED PROTOCOL
Adaptive Decentralized Re-Clustering Protocol (ADRP) [8] In this section, we describe our system model of
is a clustering protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks in which heterogeneous sensor network in a 100 m x 100 m sensor field
the cluster heads and next heads are elected based on residual with few nodes having higher initial energy. Let us assume the
energy of each node and the average energy of each cluster. case where a percentage of the population of sensor nodes is
The selection of cluster heads and next heads are weighted by equipped with more energy resources than the normal sensor
the remaining energy of sensor nodes and the average energy nodes in the network. Let mo is the percentage of the total
of each cluster. The sensor nodes with the highest energy in number of nodes m, which are equipped with α times more
the clusters can be a cluster heads at different cycles of time. energy than the normal nodes, we call these nodes as
By means of the former, the role of cluster heads can be advanced nodes. A fixed number of cluster heads are chosen
switched dynamically. from the set of advanced nodes in the entire area initially
having maximum energy in each round. All the nodes will
Another scheme considers the strategic deployment [9] for check their distance from all the cluster heads and send their
selecting the cluster header. The clusters are formed in the data to the nearest cluster head. Thus each cluster head will
form of multiple-sized fixed grids while taking into account now be associated with a group of sensor nodes who are
the arbitrary-shaped area sensed by the sensor nodes. The sending their data in their respective TDMA schedule.
simulation results show that the proposed scheme alleviates
high energy consumption and a short lifetime of the wireless Table 1. Transmission parameters value
sensor networks supported by existing schemes.
Description Symbol Value
3. HOMOGENEOUS AND HETEROGENEOUS NETWORK Number of nodes in the system N 100
MODEL Energy consumed by the amplifier εfs 10 pJ/bit/m2
In homogenous networks, all the nodes are equipped with to transmit at a short distance
the same initial energy before they begin to transmit their data Energy consumed by the amplifier εmp 0.0013
in the clustered network. After every cycle, their energy to transmit at a longer distance pJ/bit/m4
decreases depending upon the number of packets being sent to Energy consumed in the Eelec 50 nJ/bit
the cluster head. In such kind of networks, it becomes electronics circuit to transmit or
mandatory to rotate the positions of cluster head, which is receive the signal
responsible for receiving the data and sending it to the sink. Data aggregation energy EDA 5
nJ/bit/report

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 COMMUNE CACCS 2011
In LEACH, the clusters are re-established in each ‘‘round.” to 2000 bits. The difference in the extension of the Number of
New cluster heads are elected in each round and as a result the Alive Nodes can be seen in Fig.4 as compared to Fig.3
load is well distributed and balanced among the nodes of the
network. Moreover, each node transmits to the closest cluster 100
head so as to split the communication cost to the sink (which 90
is tens of times greater than the processing and operation 80

Number of Alive Nodes

cost.) Only the cluster head has to report to the sink and may 70
expend a large amount of energy, but this happens periodically 60
for each node. In LEACH there is an optimal percentage popt 50
of nodes that has to become cluster heads in each round 40
assuming uniform distribution of nodes in space. 30

20
The radio energy dissipation model [2] as shown in Fig.2 in 10
order to achieve an acceptable Signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) in 0
0 200 400 600 800 1000 1200 1400 1600 1800 2000
transmitting a k bit message over a distance d, energy Rounds
expanded by the radio is given by

k * Eelec  k * fs * d 2 if d  do Fig.3 Lifetime of LEACH

E 
TX k * Eelec  k * mp * d 4 if d  do 100

90

,where Eelec is the energy dissipated per bit to run the 80

transmitter or the receiver circuit, εfs and εmp depend on the

No of Alive Nodes
70

transmitter amplifier we use, and d the distance between the 60

sender and the receiver. By equating the two expressions at 50

40
fs
d = do, we have do  30

mp 20

10

0
0 200 400 600 800 1000 1200 1400 1600 1800 2000
Rounds

Fig.4. Lifetime of our protocol

VI. CONCLUSION

We introduce a new clustering method for electing the

cluster heads having maximum energy in each round. We have
proposed an energy efficient heterogeneous clustered scheme
Fig.2 Radio Energy Model for wireless sensor networks. Simulations results show that
our protocol has extended the lifetime of the network as
To receive a k bit message the radio expends ERX = k * compared with LEACH in the presence of same setting of
Eelec. Ultimately the total energy consumption per round is powerful nodes in a network. Hence, the performance of the
calculated and the lifetime of the network is plotted in terms proposed system is better in terms of reliability and lifetime.
of “Number of alive nodes” per round.
REFERENCES
V. SIMULATION AND PERFORMANCE RESULTS
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