Energy-efficient Ring-based Multi-hop Clustering Routing for WSNs

As a typical multi-hop clustering routing algorithm for wireless sensor networks (WSNs), RBMC (ring-based multi-hop clustering routing algorithm) needs to select cluster heads in every round and the nodes with little energy still have chance to become cluster heads. This leads to extra and uneven consumption of nodes' energy. To address the problem, we propose in this paper an energy-efficient ring-based multi-hop clustering routing algorithm based on RBMC. Our proposed algorithm considers remaining energy when selecting cluster heads and uses multi-round clustering instead of clustering in every round. Simulation results show that our algorithm performs better in reducing the energy consumption of nodes and effectively improves the lifetime of WSNs as compared to RBMC.