Partition based Multi-chain Clustering Protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract: Wireless sensor network is a network of tiny and small sensors. Due to limited size, it has limited energy supply and called a energy constraint network. It is required to design network in such a way so that it can pertain long time. To enhance network lifetime routing play a crucial role in it. Hierarchical routing is best to conserve more energy for data transmission. LEACH is the first hierarchical routing protocol for wireless sensor networks. However, it lacks in various scenarios of real deployment of the networks. In this paper, a Partition based Multi-Chain Clustering (PMCC) protocol for wireless sensor networks has been proposed to extend network lifetime. The objective of this work is to prolong the network lifetime by logically dividing the sensing field into a number of zones, which a multi-chain structure in the cluster is used for data forwarding and minimum spanning tree algorithm is adopted for communication among cluster heads. The simulation results shows that the use of proposed protocol offers significant improvement over existing protocols in extending network lifetime.

Keywords: Wireless sensor network, multi-chain, residual energy, network lifetime, load balancing.