A Survey on Clustering Algorithms in Wireless Sensor Networks: Challenges, Research, and Trends

Abstract

The Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS) and Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) developments have had a crucial effect on our daily lives. The usage of wireless sensor networks is increasing daily. They can be used in various fields such as incident management, war detection and exploration, border protection and, security monitoring. Also, they are used in unattended environments as a remote. The sensors in WSNs are fully automatic. One of the efficient ways to manage WSN effectively is clustering because it can support the scalability of nodes. One of the main challenges in Wireless Sensor Network is not only its implementation but also finding the best clustering algorithm. Besides, wireless sensor networks' features should be considered in their design as the primary keys. In this paper, we present some of the most well-known available clustering algorithms and compare them based on the features and complexity of the network. These features include the rate of node convergence, the stability, the overlapping of each cluster, supporting node movement.