Fuzzy C-Means Clustering for Energy Efficient Routing in Wireless Sensor Network

Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) consists of a set of sensor nodes that are equipped with small batteries, wireless communication interfaces and data processing capabilities. Optimization of energy is a major consideration in wireless sensor network when designing and planning the WSN routing protocols. Clustering used in routing has been proven its efficiency to save energy in sensor network. Formation of appropriate clusters is very important in designing of cluster-based routing protocols of WSN. This paper focuses on proposing an efficient cluster formation approach by using fuzzy C-means (FCM) clustering algorithm which improves the energy conservation by creating highly uniform clusters and reduce the total communication distances. Thus, the proposed clustering approach can extend the network lifetime. The proposed protocol is implemented in MATLAB simulation environment and compared to LEACH. Simulation results reveal that the proposed approach defeats LEACH protocol in terms of saving energy and prolonging network lifetime.