A Cooperative Clustering Protocol With Duty Cycling for Energy Harvesting Enabled Wireless Sensor Networks

This paper proposes a cooperative clustering protocolbased on the low energy adaptive clustering hierarchy(LEACH) approach to enhance the longevity of energy harvestingbased wireless sensor networks (EH-WSN). In the proposedprotocol, to ensure that any energy consumption associated withthe role of the cluster head (CH) is shared between the nodes,the CH role is alternated between the nodes using duty cyclingas a function of their individual energy harvesting capabilities.Furthermore, to maintain an energy neutral operation whennot acting as a CH, the nodes adopt a data transmission dutycycle and any excess energy is invested in relaying other nodes’packets. To optimize the relaying performance, a novel crosslayercooperative TDMA scheme is also presented. The optimalnumber of clusters in an EH-WSN is analyzed in terms ofenergy consumption, latency and bandwidth utilization. Simulations,performed using GreenCastalia, demonstrate tangibleperformance enhancements in adopting the proposed protocolover benchmark schemes in terms of throughput and lifetime,particularly under highly constrained energy conditions