Performance evaluation of an energy efficient clustering algorithm based on heterogeneous node deployment in a wireless sensor network

Clustering is one of the proven technique of energy conservation in a Wireless Sensor Network. In this paper, we have proposed a Deployment Based Clustering (DBC) algorithm and its performance is compared with Low Energy Adaptive Clustering Hierarchy (LEACH). In LEACH, nodes are normally deployed in a random manner. In random deployment scenario, node deployment may be fast but holes may be present which adversely affects the performance of the network. Introducing uniform deployment can be one of the options to eliminate the holes present in network. But this can be time consuming as the nodes are deployed manually in an ordered manner for uniform distribution. So we reach a covenant between random and uniform deployment to get the benefits of both. So, we have introduced DBC, where the advanced nodes are deployed in uniform manner and the remaining nodes are deployed randomly around the advanced nodes to form several clusters. In this deployment the node density is kept uniform throughout the network. In LEACH, cluster formation is done after cluster head selection, while in DBC, cluster formation is done before cluster head selection. We have observed a significant gain in the proposed DBC performance in comparison to the LEACH protocol. The performance of DBC is examined in terms of 'Number of Nodes Alive' and 'Lifetime of the Network'. The simulations show that the DBC gives 60% better performance than LEACH.