HACC: Heterogeneous-aware cooperative clustering hierarchy for wireless sensor networks

In this paper we present a low complexity cooperative diversity clustering protocol for heterogeneous wireless sensor networks. Here we analyze the impact of heterogeneity of nodes in terms of their energy in wireless sensor networks that are clustered in a co-operative fashion to prolong the effective network lifetime. In contrast to these approaches, we propose HACC, a heterogeneous-aware cooperative clustered scheme for wireless sensor networks based on weighted election probabilities of each node to become a cluster head according to its residual energy. We then propose a simple modification in the clustering algorithm to exploit virtual MIMO based cooperative transmission. In place of selecting a single cluster head at network layer, we proposed multiple cluster heads in each cluster to obtain a full diversity gain over long distance communication without sacrificing transmission data rate, and established virtual MIMO based cooperative transmission. We treated the cooperative cluster head selection method as a Facility Location Problem (FLP) to gain better energy utilization. Finally, the simulation results demonstrate that our cooperative clustering approach is more effective in prolonging the time interval before the death of the first node (we refer to as stability period) compared to the one obtained using current clustering protocols, and observe that this proposal can achieve higher order diversity gain with improved spectral efficiency when the distance to Base Station is over a given threshold.