Distributed Clustering Algorithm with Load Balancing in Wireless Sensor Network

Clustering is a promising technique for prolonging network lifetime and improving functionality of a wireless sensor network. It achieves high energy efficiency by utilizing multihop mode communication among clusters.However, relay clusters die much earlier than other cluster, because of unequal burden. As a consequence,network lifetime is significantly decreased. To mitigate this problem, rotation and unequal clustering schemes are proposed. However, rotation schemes are not much energy efficient. Unequal clustering schemes consider only distance and rarely consider overlapping clusters which can seriously affect load balancing. We propose load balancing and energy efficient clustering algorithm to efficiently distribute distance among clusters considering data volume and set up targeted clusters. In each step of clustering, algorithm estimates load on current cluster, forms next level clusters, and adjusts it with network width. As comparisons showed, our algorithm outperforms other algorithms in terms of network lifetime and load balancing.