ECH: An Enhanced Clustering Hierarchy Approach to Maximize Lifetime of Wireless Sensor Networks

In order to gather data more efficiently, a clustering hierarchy algorithm is used for data communication in wireless sensor networks (WSNs). This algorithm is one of the major techniques to improve the energy efficiency in WSNs and it provides an effective manner to maximize the lifetime of WSNs. Hierarchical protocols based on clustering hierarchy are proposed to save energy of WSNs in which the nodes with higher remaining energy could be used to collect data and transmit it to a base station. However, most of the previous approaches based on clustering hierarchy have not considered the redundant data collected by the adjacent nodes or nodes overlap each other. In this paper, an enhanced clustering hierarchy (ECH) approach has been proposed to achieve energy efficiency in WSNs by using sleeping-waking mechanism for overlapping and neighboring nodes. Thus, the data redundancy is minimized and then network lifetime is maximized. In contrast of previous hierarchical routing protocols where all nodes are required for collecting and transmitting data, the proposed approach only requires the waking nodes to do these tasks, which are keys of energy consumption in WSNs. We implement (ECH) approach in homogeneous and heterogeneous networks. Results of the simulation show its effectiveness.