Comparative study of various cluster formation algorithms in wireless sensor networks

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) is one of the rising technologies that will be widely used in the future. It is a challenging problem to select suitable cluster heads (CHs) in WSNs among large number of sensor nodes as the size affects the network lifetime performance. To achieve an energy efficient clustering protocol, the selection of CH should consider various critical parameters. There are a few methods in CH formation such as, low-energy adaptive clustering hierarchical (LEACH) protocol which randomly rotate CHs, fuzzy logic in base station (BS) for suitable CH selection and particle swarm optimization (PSO) to select suitable set of CH. In this paper, simulation results for LEACH protocol, fuzzy logic based clustering protocol and adaptive PSO based clustering protocol will be demonstrated and analyzed. Comparison of performance metrics such as network lifetime, energy consumes per round and data received by BS will be discussed in the paper.