Load‐balanced energy efficient clustering protocol for wireless sensor networks

Abstract

This paper introduces an innovative clustering protocol of load balancing which divides the whole network to the virtual circle with variable radiuses. The authors’ protocol uses an innovative architecture in intra cluster communication. In this protocol, radius of each virtual circle and the size of each cluster will increase with the increasing distance from the base station, in such way that cluster size of each circle will be different with the clusters of the other circles. In each cluster, leader nodes are responsible for collecting and compressing data from their ordinary neighbour nodes and sending them to head cluster. Simulation results demonstrate that proposed protocol increases network lifetime in comparison with protocols LEACH, TCAC and DSBCA by 73, 52 and 21%, respectively. It also makes energy efficiency and load balancing across the network.