A clustering patch hierarchical routing protocol for wireless sensor networks

Due to the limited power of the wireless sensor networks(WSNs), the network lifetime becomes a critical index in WSNs. However, network lifetime can not depict network effectively, there exist deficiency in currently evaluative standard. To solve the problem, two new indexes (network coverage rate and effective network lifetime) are introduced for evaluating WSNs. Newly evaluative standard can depict the performance of WSNs more effectively. Meanwhile, a Clustering Patch Hierarchical Routing Protocol(CPHRP) is proposed with purposes of improving network coverage rate and effective network lifetime in WSNs. It improves network coverage rate through clustering patch, and it has hierarchical multi-path tree routing property. What´s more, the nodes are partitioned into three classes: cluster node, sense node and non-sense node, which improves the energy conservation. Simulation results show that the CPHRP can guarantee more than 90% network coverage rate within most of network lifetime with comparison to HEED when the number of inner-cluster sense nodes is above 6. With the multiple growth of network nodes, the effective network lifetime of the CPHRP rises by more than 60%. When the number of inner-cluster nodes increases in multiple of 6, the growth of its network lifecycle is more than 50% in contrast of the less than 7% of HEED.