An energy aware, cluster-based routing algorithm for wireless sensor networks

Cluster-based routing protocol has special advantages to enhance scalability and efficiency of the routing protocol. The technique to network clustering that maximizes the network lifetime is an important topic of research in wireless sensor networks. In this paper, we present all energy aware cluster-based routing algorithm (ECRA) for the wireless sensor networks such that the network lifetime can be maximized. ECRA randomly selects some nodes as cluster-heads to construct Voronoi diagram and rotates the intra-cluster nodes to distribute the energy load to all sensors in the network. The simulations show that ECRA algorithm outperforms than direct communication, static clustering and LEACH. The system lifetime of ECRA is approximately 2 times than LEACH. This is because the ECRA rotates intra-cluster-heads to balance the load to all nodes in the sensor networks.