Cluster head selection by optimized ability to restrict packet drop in wireless sensor networks

Abstract

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are comprised of spatially distributed autonomous nodes attached to the sensors to detect and maintain physical and environmental states. Energy efficiency is an important challenge in wireless sensor networks, in which the batteries are equipped with these sensors with limited amount of power and act as a power source, which having limited storage capacities. Thus, energy efficient routing techniques are required incorporate operations of wireless sensor networks to provide the network connectivity and routing of data with less energy consumption. Clustering in WSNs is greatest widespread mechanism in routing processes. Existing energy efficient clustering algorithms selects the cluster head based on energy status. However, these protocols cause the cluster head to become bottleneck and drops the packets due to insufficient buffer. Thus in this work, we propose a novel efficient metric to select the cluster head known as “optimized ability to restrict packet drop” to enhance the network lifetime. This metric provides the status of nodes with respect to energy and memory. Calculation of residual status of an intermediate node is done by knapsack algorithm. Performance of proposed work is analyzed by NS2, and the results show that our work outperforms in comparison with existing protocols.