An energy efficient cluster-heads re-usability mechanism for wireless sensor networks

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are formed using a cluster of sensor nodes (SNs), deployed randomly to perform sensing operations in an area under observation. Due to the unavailability of an external power source, the energy efficiency considered as one of the critical issues in WSNs. Selection of a sensor node (SN) from a wireless sensor network (WSN) cluster to serve as an aggregator or cluster head (CH), considered as an efficient method to increase the lifetime of wireless sensor network (WSN). In this paper, we have proposed an energy efficient CH selection scheme for WSN, to enhance the lifetime and average residual energy of a single WSN cluster. The proposed strategy nominates a group SNs as CHs, based on their channel condition with the base station (BS) and their residual energy. The proposed algorithm is helpful in solving the problem of unbalanced energy consumption in WSNs. Furthermore, the mechanism of using mobile sink during the hand-off stage helps to overcome the delay in data transmission. Moreover, the incorporation of energy harvesting significantly increases the lifetime of WSN. In comparison to a state-of-art technique available in the literature, our scheme shows a 33% increase in lifetime and presents a steady decrease in residual energy for the same rounds of data transmission