ONCTR: Optimum Number of Clusters and Transmission Range based Clustering in Wireless Sensor Networks

TLDR: A new algorithm is proposed, where the number of clusters obtained from proposed method is compared with state-of-the-art methods, and it is revealed that optimum number of cluster obtained is less than state of theart method.

Abstract: The field of Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) is striving for devising ways to minimize energy consumption. Clustering reduces energy consumption and increases scalability along with network lifetime. There is a need to identify appropriate number of clusters to balance traffic in network which is a challenging task for energy efficient WSN. Manually it is difficult to decide number of clusters. Finding optimum number of clusters to minimize energy consumption is the major issue in WSN. Existing algorithms find optimum number of clusters but not optimum transmission range. This paper contributes towards the aforesaid issue by proposing a novel method to find optimum number of clusters and a first attempt to find optimum transmission range. We report a new algorithm, where the number of clusters obtained from proposed method is compared with state-of-the-art methods. Extensive experiments are carried out and result comparison with state-of-the-art approaches demonstrate that our method shows significantly better performance. The analysis reveals that optimum number of clusters obtained by proposed method is less than state-of-the-art method. It is especially suitable for clustering in WSN.