Distributed fuzzy logic based cluster head election scheme (DFLCHES) for prolonging the lifetime of the wireless sensor network

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) is considered as the predominant technology due to their high suitability and adaptability that makes it possible to be deployed in wide range of applications like civil and military domain. But energy-constraint is the significant feature that needs to be addressed for sensor networks since energy drain of sensor nodes affects network lifetime, stability and co-operation of sensor nodes in the event of enforce reliable data dissemination. Cluster head election has to been performed periodically in order to handle energy balance for facilitating reliable packet delivery. Most of the cluster head election schemes of the literature elect a node as cluster head either randomly or by elucidating their stochastic probabilities. Hence a Distributed Fuzzy Logic based Cluster Head Election Scheme (DFLCHES) that discriminates and discards packets from the sensor nodes that has the least probability of being elected as cluster head is proposed. DFLCHES utilizes five significant parameters such as trust, energy, node density, hop count and centrality measure for quantifying the probability of cluster head election. This DFLCHES is run on each neighbor nodes of the cluster members to facilitate the action of discrimination. DFLCHES also balances the energy consumption of the cluster members during transmission as it discards packets from ineligible nodes. Further the action of cluster head election has to be optimized periodically for reducing and balancing energy consumption for prolonging the network lifetime. In DFLCHES, the process of optimizing cluster head depends on the incorporation of the concept of Genetic algorithms for enabling and ensuring reliable routing.