Time delay based clustering in wireless sensor networks

In this paper we present a novel efficient energy-aware approach for clustering nodes in wireless sensor networks. We use different cluster head (CH) declaration delays for each node to characterize the qualification to be a CH. The approach guarantees the fairly uniform cluster distribution while incurring low overheads. Additionally, we do not make any assumptions about the distribution or node capabilities, e.g., location-awareness. The simulation results show that our clustering approach outperforms LEACH both in cluster characteristics and in the efficiency of prolonging the network lifetime.