EEDC: Energy-Efficient Distance-Controlled Clustering for Bottleneck Avoidance in Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) commonly employ clustering to improve scalability and energy efficiency; however, cluster heads (CHs) located near the base station (BS) often suffer from excessive relay traffic, leading to rapid energy depletion and reduced network lifetime. This article proposes an Energy-Efficient Distance-Controlled Clustering (EEDC) scheme that adjusts CH density and transmission power according to each node’s distance from the BS. In EEDC, a higher number of CHs is deployed near the BS to balance forwarding loads, while fewer CHs are selected in distant regions to conserve energy. Additionally, CHs adapt their transmission power to enable distance-proportional communication. A mathematical model is developed to analyze the relationship between CH distribution, transmission power, and overall energy consumption. Performance evaluation is conducted through simulations and compared with LEACH, HEED, DEEC, SEP, and EECS. The results show that EEDC improves the stability period by up to 42%, extends network lifetime by 23%, increases average residual energy by 13–29%, enhances throughput by 16–44%, and achieves 23–61% higher packet delivery efficiency. Moreover, cumulative CH energy consumption is reduced by 5–21%, leading to more balanced energy distribution. These findings indicate that distance-controlled CH selection and adaptive transmission power effectively alleviate the BS energy bottleneck and enhance the energy efficiency and operational longevity of clustered WSNs.