Cluster Head Selection Based on an Information Factor for Wireless Sensor Network Protocol

Abstract

In recent years, one of the main concerns in wireless sensor network (WSN) has been to design a routing protocol which has long lifetime and balanced distribution of energy consumption. In this paper, we propose an efficient protocol, in which cluster heads (CHs) are selected by value of an information factor, instead of by comparing a randomly generated number with threshold. The information factor of every member node is reported to corresponding cluster head in reporting package, and it contains information of node’s residual energy and distance between the node and base station. Number of CHs is optimized and then keeps constant until invalid nodes appear. Simulations show that the new protocol can balance energy consumption and extend the time during which there is no node using up energy, and results of repeated simulations fluctuate less heavily than other protocols