Clustering Techniques in Wireless Sensor Networks

Due to the communication devices on sensor nodes have limited battery capacity and transmission range, wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are considered to be energy constrained. In this paper, we propose a novel clustering algorithm called limiting member node clustering (LmC) algorithm to limit the number of member nodes for each cluster head by using a threshold value. The proposed clustering approach selects a cluster head based on a new cost function which considers the residual battery level, energy consumption and distance to the base station. In our experiments, we considered the transmission range of the base station in WSNs to improve the clustering performance. From experimental results, the proposed algorithm can efficiently achieve high number of successfully delivered packets as well as the longest network lifetime while give the shortest delay time and low energy consumption when compared with different existing algorithms.