Energy-aware routing in sensor networks using dual membership clusters and data highways

Efficient use of energy resources and prolonged lifetime of a network are very important issues to be considered for effective routing in sensor networks. In this paper a new algorithm is proposed which promises to deliver solutions to both the problems mentioned above, by using dual-membership clusters. Conventional clustering protocols propose single-membership clustering, where each non-cluster head owes membership to a single cluster head. The new algorithm proposes dual-membership clustering, which is very useful to minimize the use of epidemic algorithms of any sort, thereby saving a lot of resources and also making route discovery more deterministic. Simulations show that using dual-membership clusters greatly decreases the message overhead for route discovery and helps in increasing the network lifetime.