Developing a Gradient-Based Clustering Algorithm for Energy-Efficient Routing in Wireless Sensor Networks

Appropriate clustering and routing algorithms in multi-hop wireless sensor networks considerably affect the energy consumption and prolong the network lifetime. Besides, the required inter-cluster communications in these networks may lead to imbalanced energy consumption among cluster-heads that in turn decreases the network lifetime. In this paper, a gradient-based clustering algorithm for energy-efficient routing (GCER) in wireless sensor networks is proposed. The main idea is based on partitioning the sensing region in such a way that the total energy consumption of the network is minimized. The algorithm uses unequal clustering structure which balances the energy consumption among the cluster-heads and lessens the effect of hotspot problem. Furthermore, a distributed protocol for choosing cluster-heads and routing is deployed to balance the energy among all sensor nodes. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme balances the energy consumption among the cluster-heads and increases the network lifetime compared to some recent reported clustering schemes in the literature.