Towards enhancing system lifetime and maximizing data communication in Wireless Sensor Networks

Enhancing lifetime of sensor nodes should be considered as the key design objective in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN). A sensor node can only be equipped with a limited energy supply and it loses its energy during data communication. In some application scenarios, replenishment of energy resources might be impossible since the sensor nodes are distributed in remote environment. Hence, the nodes lose their energy quickly and become dead. The frequent topology changes due to the die of sensors make the network quite unstable. A good cluster head selection protocol is, therefore, required to enhance system lifetime and data communication. This paper proposes a new methodology for cluster head selection based on sensor nodes´ energy per unit cost. Experimental study shows that the proposed method, by adopting few selection criteria on choosing cluster head, increases the system lifetime and maximize data communication in comparison to existing dominant approaches.