LBCS: A Load Balanced Clustering Scheme in Wireless Sensor Networks

In a wireless sensor network, the randomly and widely deployed sensors are powered by battery, which is impossible to get recharged after deployment. Thus, energy efficiency of the sensor nodes is an important issue in wireless sensor networks for guaranteeing the network´s lifetime. Clustering is one of the most popular and effective topologies in wireless sensor networks as it reduces the whole network´s energy consumption. In this paper, we propose a load balanced clustering scheme, which distributes the cluster head nodes´ heavy burden to other assistant nodes, and takes multi-hop scheme to transmit the aggregated data to the base station. Furthermore, in the cluster formation phase, we select the cluster node by combining the distance factor and the residual energy factor. As a result, this clustering scheme balances the whole network´s energy consumption, and prolongs the network´s lifetime. At last, we conduct some simulations in NS-2, and the results show that the proposed scheme prolongs the network lifetime longer than LEACH and EECS do.