A Research on Decentralized Clustering Algorithms for Dense Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract

A wireless sensor network with large number of sensor nodes can be used as an effective tool for collecting data in various situations. Recent advancement in wireless communications and electronics has enabled the development of low-cost sensor network. Wireless sensor networks are web of sensor nodes with a set of processors and limited memory unit embedded in it. Reliable routing of packets from sensor nodes to its base station is the most important task for these networks. The conventional routing protocols cannot be used here due to its battery powered nodes. To support scalability, nodes are often grouped into non-overlapping clusters. This paper gives a brief introduction on clustering process in wireless sensor networks. A comparative analysis of different decentralized clustering algorithms used in wireless sensor networks is elaborated based on some metrics such as node mobility, cluster count, cluster head selection, etc.