Unequal Clustering - An Enhancement to Network Longevity in WSNs

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have been growing at a very fast pace due to their varied number of applications in our day to day life. Energy efficiency is one of the most stringent requirement of WSNs. Clustering is considered to be an important technique in WSNs which saves energy. However, it gives birth to hot spot problem. The solution to hot spot problem is provided by unequal clustering. This paper proves that unequal clustering enhances the WSNs longevity in varied number of network densities like: sparse, medium and highly dense WSNs. Extensive simulations exhibit that unequal clustering approaches enhance the CH node lifetime and number of alive nodes which result in enhanced network lifetime.