Energy Band Based Clustering Protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks

Clustering is one of the widely used techniques to prolong the lifetime of wireless sensor networks in environments where battery replacement of individual sensor nodes is not an option after their deployment. However, clustering overheads such as cluster formation, its size, cluster head selection & rotation, directly affects the lifetime of WSN. This paper introduces and analyzes a new Single Hop Energy Band Based clustering protocol (EBBCP) which tries to minimize the above said overheads resulting in a prolonged life for the WSN. EBBCP works on static clusters formed on the basis of energy band in the setup phase. The protocol reduces per round overhead of cluster formation which has been proved by the simulation result in MATLAB. The paper contains an in-depth analysis of the results obtained during simulation and compares EBBCP with LEACH. Unlike LEACH, EBBCP achieves evenly distributed Cluster Head throughout the target area. This protocol also produces evenly distributed dead nodes. EEBCP beats LEACH in total data packet received and produces better network life time. EBBCP uses the concept of grid node to eliminate the need of position finding system like GPS to estimating the transmission signal strength.