PCAC: Power- and Connectivity-Aware Clustering for Wireless Sensor Networks

In this article, we investigate clustering algorithms that are proposed for wireless sensor networks (WSNs). Then, we propose a clustering algorithm for WSNs called PCAC, that is both power and connectivity aware. Our proposed Power- and Connectivity-Aware Clustering (PCAC) algorithm provides higher energy efficiency and increases the total life time (TLT) of the network. We evaluate our proposed PCAC algorithm in a simulation environment and compare its performance to previously proposed algorithms. According to the simulation results, our proposed PCAC algorithm is energy efficient and also provides longer TLT (in worst-case, up to 85% improvement for a 15-node network with one-hop connectivity) to the network, compared to the previously proposed algorithms.