Musicians'-inspired clustering protocol for efficient energy Wireless Sensor Networks

In the development of cluster-based energy-efficiency protocols for Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs), a particularly challenging problem is how to dynamically organize the sensors into a wireless communication network and route sensed information from the field sensors to a remote base station in a matter that prolongs the lifetime of WSNs. This paper presents a new energy-efficient dynamic clustering algorithm for WSNs that automatically organizes the sensors into an appropriate number of clusters in the network. This algorithm, which is based on Harmony Search Algorithm, music based meta-heuristic optimization algorithm, eliminates the need to set the number of clusters a priori. In addition, a multi-objective approach is utilized in the cluster head selection algorithm in order to select the best set of cluster heads. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm can achieve an optimal number of clusters, as well as prolong the network lifetime and increase the data delivery at the base station when compared to other well-known clustering-based routing protocols.