Comparison of Energy Efficient Clustering Protocols in Heterogeneous Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract

Wireless sensor networks are an emerging technology for monitoring physical world. The energy constraint of Wireless sensor networks makes energy saving and Prolonging the network lifetime become the most important goals of various routing protocols. Clustering is a key technique used to extend the lifetime of a sensor network by reducing energy consumption. Also Putting few heterogeneous nodes in wireless sensor network is an effective way to increase the network lifetime and stability. The energy saving schemes for homogeneous wireless sensor networks do not perform efficiently when applied to heterogeneous wireless sensor networks. Thus, Energy efficient clustering protocols should be designed for the characteristic of heterogeneous wireless sensor networks. This paper surveys different energy efficient clustering protocols for heterogeneous wireless sensor networks and compares these protocols on various points like, location awareness, clustering method, heterogeneity level and clustering Attributes.