Energy-Efficient Hierarchical Routing Protocol for Homogeneous Wireless Sensor Network

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) have paved the way for a new horizon of monitoring and gathering information. One of the most decisive criteria for smooth operation of WSNs is the limited energy supply of the sensor nodes. Numerous elegant energy-efficient routing protocols have been proposed in the literature for solving this problem, e.g. LEACH (1), PEGASIS (2), Hierarchical PEGASIS (3), LEFC (4). But these protocols seem to suffer from transmission overhead. In this paper we propose Co-Axial Fixed Cluster (CFC), a new energy-efficient hierarchical routing protocol, for homogeneous wireless sensor network. Mathematical analysis reveals that Co-Axial Fixed Cluster (CFC) outperforms LEACH (1) by 683% longer lifetime for the period when WSN remains fully functionally operational. CFC uses fixed cluster and multiple designated cluster-head (CH) nodes at the center of each cluster. Only the designated CHs transmit data to the base station or to another designated CH node. Among the designated cluster-head nodes at the center of each cluster, only one node remains in active state and performs the duty of the CH of the respective cluster. Rest of the designated cluster-head nodes of each cluster remain in sleep state and just prior to the death of current CH node of a cluster, another one from among the designated cluster-head nodes take over the responsibility of the CH. Furthermore, not every active designated CH node of each cluster transmits data to the base station in each round. Rather one of the active designated CH node also acts as second level CH node and receives data from other active designated CH nodes and transmits it to the base station after data fusion. This scheme reduces transmission overhead and increases the lifetime of the WSN significantly.