Intra-cluster power management in hierarchical routing protocols for wireless sensor networks

The hierarchical routing protocol for wireless sensor networks is recognized as a technique that can reduce energy consumption of the networks and thereby increase their efficiency. Cluster head selection and network power management play important roles to improve the performance of this protocol. In this paper, a routing protocol for a small-scale wireless sensor network has been physically developed and implemented. Cluster head rotation is used to balance the energy consumption and time scheduling of the sensor node operation is carried out to achieve energy saving. The proposed work focuses on managing the energy usage within the cluster but can be extended for a large wireless sensor network facilitated by different clustering algorithms. An experimental study has been performed to compare the impact of different cluster head selection algorithms on the network´s lifetime. The test results show that the network lifetime is prolonged when a voltage-based selection scheme is used for energy conservation as compared to the other algorithms.