Clustering Algorithm Considering Sensor Node Distribution in Wireless Sensor Networks

In clustering-based approaches, cluster heads closer to the sink are usually burdened with much more relay traffic and thus, tend to die early. To address this problem, distance-aware clustering approaches, such as energy-efficient unequal clustering (EEUC), that adjust the cluster size according to the distance between the sink and each cluster head have been proposed. However, the network lifetime of such approaches is highly dependent on the distribution of the sensor nodes, because, in randomly distributed sensor networks, the approaches do not guarantee that the cluster energy consumption will be proportional to the cluster size. To address this problem, we propose a novel approach called CACD (Clustering Algorithm Considering node Distribution), which is not only distance-aware but also node density-aware approach. In CACD, clusters are allowed to have limited member nodes, which are determined by the distance between the sink and the cluster head. Simulation results show that CACD is 20%-50% more energy-efficient than previous work under various operational conditions considering the network lifetime.