A distributed link quality based d-clustering protocol for dense ZigBee sensor networks

The Link Quality Indicator (LQI) is defined in the 802.15.4 standard, but its context of use is not specified in this standard. Some works on the LQI, few of which are field experiments, have shown that the LQI decreases as the distance increases. In WSN, it is not often desirable to use the GPS technology. Indeed, the use of GPS is expensive and may reduce the overall network performance. Moreover, indoor reception of the GPS signal is not possible. However, in cluster formation, it is quite important to sufficiently outspread the clusterheads (or caryommes) in order to improve the network efficiency. Therefore we propose a LQI based d-clustering protocol (LQI-DCP) which produces clusters of which each clusterhead has a better positioning regarding the locations of other clusterheads. Simulation results show that the caryommes resulting from LQI-DCP are sufficiently outspread. LQI-DCP also reduces the density of clusterheads and then improves the WSN energy efficiency, while each sensor remains still at less than d-hops from a caryomme.