An improved cluster formation process in wireless sensor network to decrease energy consumption

Wireless sensor network has special features and many applications, which have attracted attention of many scientists. High energy consumption of these networks, as a drawback, can be reduced by a hierarchical routing algorithm. The proposed algorithm is based on the Low Energy Adaptive Clustering Hierarchy (LEACH) and Quadrant Cluster based LEACH (Q-LEACH) protocols. To reduce energy consumption and provide a more appropriate coverage, the network was divided into several regions and clusters were formed within each region. In selecting the cluster head (CH) in each round, the amount of residual energy and the distance from the center of each node were calculated by the base station (including the location and residual energy of each node) for all living nodes in each region. In this regard, the node with the largest value had the highest priority to be selected as the CH in each network region. The base station calculates the CH due to the lack of energy constraints and is also responsible for informing it throughout the network, which reduces the load consumption and tasks of nodes in the network. The information transfer steps in this protocol are similar to the LEACH protocol stages. To better evaluate the results, the proposed method was implemented with LEACH LEACH-SWDN, and Q-LEACH protocols using MATLAB software. The results showed better performance of the proposed method in network lifetime, first node death time, and the last node death time.