A backoff-based energy efficient clustering algorithm for wireless sensor networks

Wireless sensor networks have emerged recently as an effective way of monitoring remote or inhospitable physical environments. One of the major challenges in devising such networks is how to organize a large amount of sensor nodes without the coordination of any centralized access point. Clustering can not only conserve limited system resource, but also serve as an effective self-organization tool. In this paper, we present a distributed clustering algorithm based on adaptive backoff strategy. By adaptively adjusting the wakeup rate of the exponential distribution, a node with higher residual energy is more likely to be elected clusterhead. We also take advantage of the content ion- based channel access method to ensure that clusterheads are well scattered. Simulation experiments illustrate that our algorithm is able to significantly prolong network life compared with the conventional approach.