A Novel Energy-Efficient Clustering Algorithm (NEEC) for Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) consist of small nodes with sensing, computation, and wireless communications capabilities. Many routing, power management, and data dissemination protocols have been specially designed for WSNs where energy awareness is an essential design issue. The clustering algorithm is a kind of key technique used to reduce energy consumption. It can increase the scalability and lifetime of the network. Energy-efficient clustering protocols should be designed for the characteristic of heterogeneous wireless sensor networks. We propose and evaluate a novel energy-efficient clustering scheme for heterogeneous wireless sensor networks, which is called NEEC. In NEEC, the nodes are randomly generated in a fixed square region. Initially the nodes are considered as homogeneous and for the first round, the cluster heads are elected using Euclidean distance between the nodes. From the second round onwards the nodes are considered as heterogeneous and the cluster-heads are elected based on the residual energy of each node. The nodes with high initial and residual energy will have more chances to be the cluster-heads than the nodes with low energy. Finally, the simulation results show that NEEC achieves longer lifetime and more effective message transmission.