Connectivity enhancement in randomly distributed wireless sensor network using cooperative cluster transmission

Sustaining an acceptable level of network connectivity is a critical requirement in wireless sensor networks. Due to limited battery power, sensors are suspected to failure which causes the loss of sensors and results the unsatisfactory connectivity. In hostile environment, Sensors are randomly and recklessly heaved over area of interest which causes accumulation of sensors in one area and absence in other. In such situations, the multihop transmission is not appropriate for providing the network connectivity. In this paper, an approach for improving the connectivity with limited number of sensors using cooperative cluster transmission is presented. A light weight clustering algorithm to support the cooperative transmission for a sparsely deployed sensor network is presented. The simulation results show that the higher connectivity is achieved with limited number of sensors employing the cooperative cluster transmission algorithm. The performance of cooperative cluster transmission algorithm is always high as compared to multihop transmission mechanism.