A New Cluster Based Routing Protocol for Improving Load Balancing and Prolonging Network Lifetime in Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract

The increase in network lifetime is one of the important challenges because the lifetime of Wireless Sensor Networks is limited by the energy (battery) of the nodes. Clustering is an effective topology control approach in sensor networks. The nodes close to each other have more overlap; they sense the same data from environment and cause a waste of energy by generating repetitive data. In this paper, a cluster based routing protocol is introduced, in the proposed protocol, in each round a certain number of nodes are specified; the nodes which have at least one neighboring node at a distance less than the threshold. Then, among them the nodes with less energy and greater overlap with their neighbors have been chosen to go to sleep mode, Also, in each round the nodes having more energy are selected as cluster head. On the basis of the simulation results by MATLAB, the proposed protocol increases the network lifetime, balances the load among sensor nodes further, and increases the network coverage.