Impact of rate of recurrent communication of sensor node on network lifetime in a wireless sensor network

Recent research works suggest cluster head reselection as a mechanism for network lifetime improvement. Cluster head reselection is either energy or time dependent. However, frequent cluster head reselection increases time overhead and energy consumption leading to reduction in network lifetime. Hence, an attempt is made to minimise the cluster head reselection frequency. The cluster head reselection is carried out whenever the energy of current cluster head falls below the threshold and this threshold corresponds to the minimum energy required for a node to survive. It is this selection of the threshold value that favours reduction in cluster head reselection frequency. Further, the cluster head reselection is based on energy drainage parameters such as the rate of recurrent communication of sensor node in addition to the residual energy of the node and distance of the node from the base station. To demonstrate the effect of rate of recurrent communication of sensor node on cluster head reselection, experiments are conducted both through simulation and hardware. Further, to study the effectiveness of the proposal, comparisons are made with other algorithms such as low energy adaptive clustering hierarchy (LEACH)-C, adaptive decentralised re-clustering protocol and T-LEACH. Reduced cluster head reselection frequency exhibits low energy consumption and time overhead with enhanced network lifetime.