Minimum Overlapping Layers and Its Variant for Prolonging Network Lifetime in PMRC-Based Wireless Sensor Networks

The overlapping layers (OL) scheme proposed in our previous work provides a solution to balance the load of cluster heads at different layers in the PMRC-based wireless sensor networks. However, in the OL scheme, the layer boundary and the overlap range are static through the network lifetime. The network lifetime is still limited by some nodes which have only one candidate cluster head. To overcome this limitation, in this paper, we propose the Minimum overlapping layers (MOL) scheme with gradually changed layer boundary through network lifetime and its variant, the MOL with initial overlap (MOLIO) scheme. The simulation results of the OL, MOL, and MOLIO schemes show that the MOL scheme significantly prolongs the network lifetime than the OL scheme for most transmission ranges and the MOLIO scheme achieves better results than the MOL scheme at larger transmission ranges.