ACH: Away Cluster Heads Scheme for Energy Efficient Clustering Protocols in WSNs

This paper deals with the routing protocols for distributed wireless sensor networks. The conventional protocols for WSNs like Low Energy adaptive Clustering Hierarchy (LEACH), Stable Election Protocol (SEP), Threshold Sensitive Energy Efficient Network (TEEN), Distributed Energy Efficient Clustering Protocol (DEEC) may not be optimal. We propose a scheme called Away Cluster Head (ACH) which effectively increases the efficiency of conventional clustering based protocols in terms of stability period and number of packets sent to base station (BS). We have implemented ACH scheme on LEACH, SEP, TEEN and DEEC. Simulation results show that LEACH-ACH, SEP-ACH, TEEN-ACH and DEEC-ACH performs better than LEACH, SEP, TEEN and DEEC respectively in terms of stability period and number of packets sent to BS. The stability period of the existing protocols prolongs by implementing ACH on them.