An energy balanced geo-cluster head set based multi-hop routing for wireless sensor networks

Increasing the lifetime of wireless sensor networks (WSNs) is a challenging issue in many sensor applications due to the limited energy available in sensor nodes. To improve the lifetime of a sensor network, it is essential to achieve load balancing among the sensor nodes. The grouping of sensor nodes into clusters is an efficient technique for conserving energy. Cluster Heads are elected for each of these clusters, in order to collect and aggregate the data from the sensor nodes within a cluster and forward it to the sink through a single-hop or multi-hop relay. In a multi-hop relay, cluster heads near to the sink are exposed to heavy traffic. The energy of these nodes is soon depleted and this is referred to the 'hot-spot' issue in sensor networks. This paper proposes a geo-clustering process based on the location of the sink. Each of the clusters is assigned a set of geo-cluster heads, in which a primary cluster head is assisted with one or more secondary cluster heads. to compensate the hot-spot issues arising due to inter-cluster traffic, clusters near to the sink are assigned with larger sets of geo-cluster heads than the clusters located far from the sink. This setup allows the clusters nearer to the sink to share the load of the single CH used in traditional approaches. The proposed clustering approach benefits from reduced number of hot-spots and gives rise to considerable savings in energy. The performance evaluation of the proposed algorithm as against a selected set of existing algorithms indicates improvement in energy preservation and prolongs the lifetime of the WSN.