Energy efficient clustering in wireless sensor network using cluster of cluster heads

Energy of sensor nodes is scarce resource in wireless sensor network. It is vital to reduce energy consumption to improve lifetime of wireless sensor network. A proficient way to improve lifetime is to partition sensor network into groups called cluster with high energy node acting as leader of the cluster called cluster head. Cluster head is responsible for managing intra-cluster and inter cluster communication. Energy level of cluster head at a given point of time determines life of cluster and thereby whole sensor network. Failure in the cluster head brings cluster communication to halt and may require re-clustering to get sensor network back on track. These activities involve additional energy expenditure and ultimately possess great impact on lifetime of sensor network as a whole. To balance energy consumption among the cluster heads this paper proposes to have cluster of cluster heads within the cluster of sensor nodes. Given a moment, one cluster head act as master of the given cluster and the master-ship is rotated among cluster heads after specified number of rounds of communication. This improves the energy utilization of sensor network, maximizes the network lifetime and makes the wireless sensor network fault tolerant to some extent.