Firework inspired load balancing approach for wireless sensor networks

Wireless Networks - In Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs), where power consumption is a huge concern, the improvement of the network’s lifetime is an area of constant study and innovation. The...     

A Location-less Energy Efficient Algorithm for Load Balanced Clustering in Wireless Sensor Networks

One of the biggest challenges in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) is to efficiently utilise the limited energy available in the network. In most cases, the energy units of sensors cannot be replaced or replenished. Therefore, the need for energy efficient and robust algorithms for load balancing in WSNs is ever present. This need is even more pronounced in the case of cluster-based WSNs, where the Cluster Head (CH) gathers data from its member nodes and transmits this data to the base station or sink. In this paper, we propose a location independent algorithm to cluster the sensor nodes under gateways, as CHs into well defined, load balanced clusters. The location-less aspect also avoids the energy loss in running GPS modules. Simulations of the proposed algorithm are performed and compared with a few existing algorithms. The results show that the proposed algorithm shows better performance under different evaluation metrics such as average energy consumed by sensor nodes vs number of rounds, number of active sensors vs number of rounds, first gateway die and half of the gateways die.