Hot-spot issue aware clustering for WSNs to extend stable operation period

In existing energy-efficient clustering algorithms for Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs), individual nodes usually experience significant differences in lifetime. The issue of some nodes depleting energy earlier than other is usually referred to as hot-spot issue in WSNs, which dramatically shortens the stable operation period of a network when all nodes are live with residual energy. This paper addresses hot-spot issue through equalizing individual node's lifetime throughout the network. The probability of nodes to become cluster-head (CH) in this algorithm is relevant to node distance to the sink and is subject to the individual node-lifetime equalization. When selecting CHs, the residual node energy is considered as well. Performance evaluation illustrates the effectiveness of our algorithm in terms of extending the stable operation period of the clustered WSNs.