A fuzzy clustering based mobility-adaptive routing protocol for wireless sensor networks

Mobility in cluster based wireless sensor networks is reminder of a new challenge that is not considered as an important issue is traditional protocols designed for static environments. This new challenge is packet delivery. When nodes leave their cluster zone, they no longer can send data to the cluster head, and they have to find as soon as possible a new cluster head. By increasing mobility in the network, this situation becomes worse. To address this issue an adaptive protocol needed to reduce the packet loss by selecting better cluster heads and assign a new cluster head to mobile nodes in order to avoid more packet loss. In this paper we proposed MACP-FL, a mobility adaptive clustering protocol proposed for mobile wireless sensor networks. In setup phase of our protocol, we used FCM algorithm to divide the network into several clusters. The candidate cluster heads are selected based on three measures, residual energy, and membership function. When candidate cluster heads have been selected, by considering maximum radio range, suitable cluster head for each individual node selected based on estimated connection time between node and corresponding cluster heads. If a node is going to leave its cluster in transmission phase, it selects the new cluster head based on estimated connection time. Simulation results show that our method outperforms LEACH-M, LEACH-ME and MBC in terms of data delivery rate and energy consumption.