Experimental Evaluation of Timing Bounds for Clustering Protocols in Wireless Sensor Networks

In recent years a flurry of research activity has produced many suggested schemes for clustering wireless sensor networks, but no hard numbers for real-world implementations. This lack of guidance for developers makes it very difficult to effectively and confidently build working networks. This paper partially addresses these concerns by deriving minimal timing bounds on the clustering process in a typical and recently suggested clustering schemes. This is achieved through low-level network simulation in NS - 2. We present detailed results that provide insight to timings involved in different phases of cluster set up. Results show ideal clusters can be constructed within 0.5 s for expected node densities (<= 0.04 nodes/m(2)).