An energy-efficient clustering algorithm in mobile sensor networks

The random mobility of mobile sensor networks causes many difficulties on designing related algorithms and protocols, such as high energy consumption, low energy efficiency and short lifetime. In order to improve the performance of mobile sensor networks, this paper proposes an energy-efficient clustering algorithm in which residual energy of sensor nodes and average residual energy of systems are considered to co-design the clustering algorithm. It can overcome the problems brought by the random mobility in mobile sensor networks. A novel residual energy difference ratio is presented to select cluster-heads, which can reduce energy consumption, increase throughput rate and prolong the network lifetime. The NS2 software is used to simulate the algorithm and the simulation results verify the validity of the new clustering algorithm.