An energy-aware distributed unequal clustering protocol for wireless sensor networks

Due to the imbalance of energy consumption of nodes in wireless sensor networks (WSNs), some local nodes die prematurely, which causes the network partitions and then shortens the lifetime of the network. The phenomenon is called hot spot or energy hole problem. For this problem, an energy-aware distributed unequal clustering protocol (EADUC) in multihop heterogeneous WSNs is proposed. Compared with the previous protocols, the cluster heads obtained by EADUC can achieve balanced energy, good distribution, and seamless coverage for all the nodes. Moreover, the complexity of time and control message is low. Simulation experiments show that EADUC can prolong the lifetime of the network significantly.