DDC protocol to protract network lifetime of wireless sensor networks

Efficient energy consumption of sensor nodes is the prime design issue for wireless sensor networks because the energy of sensor nodes is the scarcest resource. Clustering has been examined as an energy-efficient approach for wireless sensor networks. Performance of a clustering method is highly dependent upon the way it selects cluster heads. Most of the existing clustering methods, for selecting cluster heads, depend upon a random number generated by each sensor nodes. Dependency of different methods on this random number may result in the selection of low energy nodes as cluster head over high energy nodes which makes network load unbalanced and affects network lifetime. In this paper, a Distributed Dynamic Clustering (DDC) protocol has been proposed that capitalizes the node energy heterogeneity to recondition the random number generated by nodes in such a manner that the reconditioned number of high remaining energy nodes is small while the number of low remaining energy node is large, consequently the nodes having high remaining-energy get selected as cluster heads. Performance of the proposed DDC protocol has been compared to important existing clustering methods namely Low Energy Adaptive Cluster Hierarchy, Stable Election Protocol, and Distributed Energy-Efficient Clustering for both homogeneous and heterogeneous wireless sensor networks. The analysis of simulation results shows that the network lifetime is longer and throughput is higher in the case of DDC protocol in comparison of other methods. © 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.