Energy efficient clustering protocol to enhance lifetime of wireless sensor network

A sensor node is a tiny device that includes a sensing subsystem, a processing subsystem and a wireless communication subsystem. The sensor nodes have limited resources in terms of memory, energy and computational resources. Clustering has been proposed by researches to group a number of nodes to form a cluster that managed by cluster head. However, most existing clustering protocols consume large amount of energy due to cluster formation overhead and cluster head responsibilities. We proposed an energy efficient clustering protocol (EECPL) to enhance lifetime of wireless sensor networks. The main goal of EECPL is to distribute the energy load among all sensor nodes to minimize the energy consumption and maximize the network lifetime of wireless sensor networks. EECPL organizes sensor nodes into clusters and uses ring topology to send data packets so that each sensor node receives data from a previous neighbor and transmits data to a next neighbor. Upon receiving the aggregated data from previous neighbors, cluster senders transmit the aggregated data to the base station. EECPL is shown to achieve significant energy savings, balance the energy consumption among sensor nodes and reduce communication overhead.