Energy Efficient Clustering using a Wake-up Receiver

We present a new energy-saving method for creating node clusters with similar sensor readings. The idea is to wake up a node/main transceiver only when data correlated to the node’s own data is transmitted. This is achieved by encoding relevant parts of local data in a wake-up receiver’s data pattern. Through this new protocol the building of clusters becomes highly energy-efficient, even if re-clustering is required, the energy consumed for clustering is still low. For environments where re-clustering is often necessary a clustering scheme can be used to further reduce the energy consumption. This further reduction can be achieved efficiently through the transmission of the sensor readings from only one node of the cluster to the data sink. One reading is therefore sufficient to approximate the readings of the whole cluster because all nodes within this cluster have similar sensor readings.