3D grid clustering scheme for wireless sensor networks

Advances in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) technology have made a remarkable impact in the society. Since WSNs solely depend on the battery power of the tiny sensor nodes, maximizing the lifespan of the wireless sensor networks is a critical issue in the design and analysis of WSNs. Cluster-based routing prolongs the lifetime of the network. Most of the existing cluster-based routing protocols are applicable for two-dimensional network region. However, 2D deployment is not applicable if sensors are deployed in 3D space such as atmosphere or ocean. The proposed work presents a 3D grid clustering scheme which considers the deployment area as three-dimensional grids. The algorithm constructs optimal and load-balanced clusters at each grid cell with an initial cluster head (CH). As early energy depletion is a major design issue in clustering protocols, the proposed algorithm provides local remedy by using substitution CHs for replacing energy suffering cluster heads and nodes are independently distributed among clusters. The obtained simulation results show that our proposed scheme considerably outpaces the other existing schemes in terms of prolonging the lifespan of WSNs