VICE-CLUSTER HEAD SELECTION APPROACH FOR OPTIMAL NETWORK LIFETIME IN WIRELESS SENSOR NETWORKS

Abstract

Numerous sensor nodes when networked together to share their sensed information forms a wireless sensor network. Because of its various applications and uses, it is becoming a new trend in the field of research. These sensor nodes are deployed randomly in the work field. They sense its environment in order to get useful information and impart this sensed information to Base Station also known as Sink Node via a previously elected node called Cluster Head. This information is major to base station for decision making. In this dissertation, we have introduced a new approach for increasing the wireless sensor network lifetime. As we know, the nodes in wireless sensor networks have limited battery that cannot be recharged or cannot be changed when depleted completely. So, we need to use this battery very efficiently. Because once the battery of a node is completely depleted it can no longer transmit its sensed information to other nodes. So, to perform better and to increase the lifespan of a wireless network such that more number of data packets or information can be send to Base Station we have proposed one new vice-cluster head selection approach. This proposed approach overcomes one major limitation of previous approaches of non-uniform distribution of Cluster Heads in the field. Our proposed approach performs better than various previous approaches like LEACH, I-LEACH in terms of the number of data packets sent to Base Station, number of alive nodes, as well as the average energy of the network.