Modified Clustering Algorithms for Energy Harvesting Wireless Sensor Networks- A Survey

Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) has evolved as a key technology and has brought about a few changes in how the network is being adopted for modern applications. Despite the considerable growth and success, the limitation in the energy of sensor nodes persists. Researches have been rising to mitigate energy consumption by various energy management approaches, and the most efficient among them is clustering. Clustering groups the nodes according to their similarities or other parameters and helps to utilize the energy efficiently. However, it cannot wholly reduce energy consumption, so the WSN now adapts the advancement of energy harvesting (EH) and takes the new shape called EH-WSN. Energy harvesting converts the ambient energy into electrical energy and power the sensor nodes. By exploiting the recharging capabilities of this new technique, the network's lifetime is significantly increased. The performance enhancement is also crucial; hence, the energy harvesting nodes are clustered, and efficient clustering algorithms are being developed. This paper presents the clustering algorithms that have been developed newly and revised for EH-WSN. The parameters considered and that differ from the traditional clustering are analyzed. Further, the comparison among those approaches has facilitated the paper to bring out the challenges and future research directions in the clustering algorithms for EH-WSN.