Algorithms for energy-efficient clustering in wireless sensor networks

The concept of clustering in wireless sensor networks refers to the grouping of sensors into clusters where each cluster has a cluster head communicating the aggregated signal to base station. In this paper, we present a simple algorithm for calculating the best position for installing the cluster head such that the overall energy consumption of the cluster is minimized. The algorithm has a low complexity that is largely independent of cluster size. Hence it is especially suitable for large clusters. Based on this algorithm, we then propose a simple heuristic method for minimizing the overall energy consumption of wireless sensor networks with a given number of clusters. Finally, the heuristic method is further modified to ensure that each cluster is of a large enough size, such that certain load balance can be achieved between different clusters.