Research On Cluster-based Routing Protocols In Wireless Sensor Network

With the development of wireless communications, low-power and highly integrated digital electronic products, and micro-electro-mechanical systems technology, wireless sensor network (WSN), which combines sensor, wireless communication and networks technologies, has been paid much more attention. Moreover, WSN has been widely used in more and more application fields such as military affairs, environmental surveillance and biomedical treatment. However, the sensor nodes in WSN are generally battery powered and the energy of each node is limited. In addition, since there are a large number of sensor nodes randomly arranged in WSN, it is difficult to maintain these nodes and recharge energy for each node. Therefore, WSN has serious energy constraints. One of the approaches to overcome energy constraints is to design energy efficient and consumption balanced routing protocols for WSN.Considering the above mentioned research hotspots, in this paper, the existing routing protocols is firstly introduced. Furthermore, the methods, their advantages and disadvantages in energy conversation and network optimization are analyzed. Then, on the basic of ideas from these routing protocols, a static cell-based clustering routing protocol (LEACH-SC), an energy-balanced chain-cluster routing protocol (EBCRP) and an efficient energy cluster-based routing protocols (EECRP) are presented. LEACH-SC puts up with static cell of clustering approaches and chooses a node with the largest energy as cluster head in each cluster, which overcomes LEACH's disadvantages and prolongs the network lifetime. The core point of EBCRP is to form several chain-clusters in the initial stage, which is based on the ladder algorithm. In addition, a number of nodes as the candidate for cluster head in each cluster are selected and taken turns by an energy restriction to communicate with the base station. EECRP uses an uneven clustering method to organize network topology and particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm to optimize the clusters, which can settle the problem of hot spot and blind nodes, respectively. Simulation result shows that the energy consumption of each node is effectively balanced and the network lifetime is greatly increased by using EECRP.