Energy Efficient Cluster Head Selection for Data Aggregation in Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless sensor network consists of several distributed sensor nodes. It is used for several environmental applications, military applications and health related applications. However, a WSN is a power constrained system, since nodes run on limited power batteries which shorten its lifespan. Battery unit determines the lifespan of the sensor network. Energy consumption is therefore one of the most crucial design issues in WSN. To prolong the lifetime of the sensor nodes, designing efficient routing protocols is critical. Most of the research in energy efficient data gathering in data centric applications of wireless sensor networks is motivated by LEACH (Low Energy Adaptive Clustering Hierarchy) scheme. It allows the rotation of cluster head role among the sensor nodes and tries to distribute the energy consumption over the network. Selection of sensor node for such role rotations greatly affects the energy efficiency of the network. Some of the routing protocol has a drawback that the cluster is not evenly distributed due to its randomized rotation of local cluster head. We have surveyed several existing methods for selecting energy efficient cluster head in wireless sensor networks. We have proposed an energy efficient cluster head selection method in which the cluster head selection and replacement cost is reduced and ultimately the network lifetime is increased. Using our proposed method, network life time is increased compared to existing methods.