Study on the Hierarchical Structure of Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless sensor network is a kind of data centric network, which transmit sensing data to sink nodes. Considering energy constraints, how to make full use of the limited energy to work reliably becomes a main research area in wireless sensor networks. In this paper, we propose a vote based cluster head election algorithm. In this algorithm, nodes vote to others who owning more remaining energy, and the process is carried among neighbors. According to the voting rules, nodes owning more energy and more neighbors will get more votes. Conversely, nodes owning less energy and less neighbors will get fewer votes. Cluster heads are specified based on the number of the votes. Several experiments have been done to validate the algorithm.