A Novel Clustering Algorithm in Wireless Sensor Networks

The demands of energy-efficient, distributed and scalable features are critical factors for designing topology control and routing management scheme in wireless sensor networks. To meet these demands, clustering is a good method in sensor networks topology control and routing. But by analyzing former clustering algorithms, it is found that there are deficiencies and limitations because of the usage of random method in cluster head election. In this paper, clustering mechanism is modeled and analyzed theoretically, and then turned to approximate optimization problem. A novel heuristic information based clustering algorithm is proposed to solve the above problem. The performance of this novel algorithm is analyzed and validated by simulation experiments. The results of experiments indicate that the algorithm can conduct clustering in network well and obtain excellent network performance, such as improved robustness, lower global energy cost and longer network lifetime. In particular, the performance is still stable while increasing the nodes scale.