Maximizing Information Transmission for Energy Harvesting Sensor Networks by an Uneven Clustering Protocol and Energy Management

For an energy harvesting sensor network, when the network lifetime is not the only primary goal, maximizing the network performance under environmental energy harvesting becomes a more critical issue. However, clustering protocols that aim at providing maximum information throughput have not been thoroughly explored in Energy Harvesting Wireless Sensor Networks (EH-WSNs). In this paper, clustering protocols are studied for maximizing the data transmission in the whole network. Based on a long short-term memory (LSTM) energy predictor and node energy consumption and supplement models, an uneven clustering protocol is proposed where the cluster head selection and cluster size control are thoroughly designed for this purpose. Simulations and results verify that the proposed scheme can outperform some classic schemes by having more data packets received by the cluster heads (CHs) and the base station (BS) under these energy constraints. The outcomes of this paper also provide some insights for choosing clustering routing protocols in EH-WSNs, by exploiting the factors such as uneven clustering size, number of clusters, multiple CHs, multihop routing strategy, and energy supplementing period.