WSN lifetime prolongation for deterministic distributions using a hierarchical routing protocol

Extending the lifetime of Wireless Sensor Networks is one important design goal when practically deploying them. The paper addresses the problem of choosing the optimum number of clusters in deterministically distributed nodes in a wireless sensor network in order to maximize its lifetime. Hierarchical routing protocol is used on some of the deterministic nodes distributions such as uniform, circular, hexagonal and star distribution, to show how to choose the optimal number of clusters. Compared to non-clustering case and arbitrary clustering, lifetime enhancement is noticed for all the examined distributions. The paper also shows that choosing the right cluster shape is one of the important factors that affect the network lifetime.