Energy-Efficient Cluster-Head Rotation in Beacon-Enabled IEEE 802.15.4 Networks

Wireless sensor networks that use slotted, beacon-enabled IEEE 802.15.4 standard are often implemented using clustering with randomized sleep of ordinary nodes to extend the network lifetime. To reduce the imbalance of power consumption between cluster-head and ordinary nodes, we propose a fair and efficient cluster-head rotation protocol with virtually zero overhead and no dead time. Through Markov chain modeling and probabilistic analysis, we show that the proposed approach achieves extremely good balance of nodes' lifetime and optimal network lifetime in maximin sense, outperforming other approaches that use TDMA access.