SMART Clustering: A Methodical Approach to Increasing Energy Efficiency in Diverse Wireless Sensor Network

Abstract

Wireless Sensor Networks represent a significant area of research involving a multitude of sensor nodes distributed across a geographical area, operating with limited battery power. These networks are often deployed in challenging environments, making energy conservation a critical challenge. To address this, clustering has been identified as a highly effective technique for reducing energy consumption. This research introduces a novel clustering approach aimed at decreasing energy consumption and extending the overall lifetime of the network, particularly crucial for deployments in inaccessible areas. The proposed approach incorporates heterogeneity to enhance the stability and energy efficiency of randomly deployed sensor nodes. We assessed the effectiveness of the proposed protocol through simulations and compared it with well-established distributed protocols. The results demonstrate the efficiency of our approach in terms of the stability period, residual energy inside the network, and the number of cluster heads generated inside the network. Additionally, the proposed method exhibits improved performance in the number of dead nodes and overall network lifetime.