Strengthening Clustering Through Relay Nodes in Sensor Networks
Amit Chugh, Supriya P. Panda · Procedia Computer Science · 2018
Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are harshly challenged by limited energy. It’s essential to use available energy in efficient manner to maintain sustainability in networks. Sensor nodes once after deployment start depleting their energy in various roles; some may on sensing; some may on communication, some may on aggregating etc. After intense survey its proven fact that communication is the biggest reason of energy consumption. To reduce communication energy requirements clustering plays a very important role. Clustering employs that only cluster heads will participate for communicating aggregated information to far located base station. Challenge comes when cluster heads are managing both roles as heads as well as relay nodes. The role of relay node may require that they are aggregating and communicating their own data as well as other data received due to multi hop communication. This paper focuses on how relay nodes can strengthen clustering. Cluster Heads can save their energy and have prolonged life if sensor networks are optioned with separate relay nodes. This paper has proposed modified Mutual Exclusive Distributive Clustering (MEDC) protocol along relay node. Proposed solution will work to chase relay nodes different from cluster heads and will improve network lifetime further.