Reliability-Based Cluster Head Selection Methodology Using Fuzzy Logic for Performance Improvement in WSNs

Prolonging the network lifetime is one of the vital challenges in wireless sensor networks (WSNs). Typically, the lifespan of WSNs can be increased by a technique called clustering, which plays a significant role in simplifying intra-domain routing. The clustering method accounts only a small number of nodes, which are randomly selected as cluster heads (CHs). The main responsibility of CHs is to receive collected data or information from its member nodes and to aggregate the received data and convey the received data to the sink (Sk) or base station (BSn). In this paper, we have proposed a method namely “reliability-based enhanced technique for the ordering of preference by similarity ideal solution (RE-TOPSIS)” combining with fuzzy logic which uses multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) approach aiding in the effective and reliable selection of CHs. It also uses the conventional LEACH protocol to enable one-time CH selection or scheduling in each cluster based on RE-TOPSIS rank index value. This process completely eliminates the need of CH selection process in each round of LEACH's setup state cycle. We have accounted for various criteria such as 1) residual energy; 2) distances between adjacent nodes; 3) energy utilization rates; 4) availability of neighboring nodes; 5) distances between the sink and CHs as well as distances between CHs to member nodes; and 6) the reliability index for completely devising the new scheme. The simulations are accomplished to assess or suggest the performances of the proposed RE-TOPSIS and to compare its performances with the performances of the existing protocols. The results show that the proposed scheme enhances the network lifespan, conserves energy, and introduces a considerable reduction in the frequency of CH selection per cycle by about 20%-25% as compared with the contemporary fuzzy-TOPSIS and LEACH protocols and finally the metrics of the proposed RE-TOPSIS are highlighted.