Comprehensive Study of Node Clustering in Wireless Sensor Networks for Environment Monitoring

In this paper, a summary of our work on energy-conservation properties of node clustering in WSNs is provided. The main contributions of this work include: 1) It is proven that only clustering schemes which position their resultant clusters within the isocluster(i) of the monitored phenomenon are guaranteed to reduce the nodes' energy consumption and extend the network lifetime. 2) A novel WSN clustering algorithm - Local Negotiated Clustering Algorithm (LNCA) is proposed. To our knowledge, LNCA is the first clustering algorithm that employs the similarity of nodes' readings as the main criterion in cluster formation. As such, LNCA is highly effective in minimizing in-network data-reporting traffic and, accordingly, in reducing the energy usage of individual sensor nodes. 3) The key features of our Qualnet-based [1] simulation framework for the performance analysis of clustered WSNs are outlined, and some selected simulation results obtained with the given framework are presented.