A Decentralized Multi Competitive Clustering in Wireless Sensor Networks for the Precision Agriculture

To reduce cost and to increase production in precision agriculture, today's world need advanced methods and technology. We explore the use of Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) in the agriculture domain. Various sensors are deployed to gather the desired information that will be analysed and processed. To reduce energy consumption, Wireless Sensor Networks require effective and simple approaches because of their limited energy power. To implement energy efficient WSNs, Clustering the nodes is an appropriate method. Here we propose a decentralized multi competitive clustering method (DMCC) for WSNs. Initially high residual energy nodes are selected as Cluster Head Candidates (CHCs). From the CHCs, Cluster Heads (CHs) are selected based on contention for being CH. A CHC with minimal distance to its neighboring nodes and having more neighbor nodes will become a CH. According to the residual energy more CHs are selected repeatedly from nodes which are not CHCs till ideal number of CHs is obtained. By this DMCC achieves stable number of CHs and CHs are distributed evenly. DMCC performs load balancing amongst clusters and prolongs lifetime of the network by conserving energy in the nodes. Here DMCC is compared with existing clustering protocols using NS3 simulator.