Hybrid Cluster Mesh Scheme for Energy Efficient Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) have become a key technology for ubiquitous computing environments. In WSNs, battery recharge or replacement is impossible because sensors are left unattended after deployment. Therefore, WSNs need a networking protocol scheme to increase the life time of sensor nodes. The clustering technique is an efficient approach for reducing energy consumption in wireless sensor networks. In cluster topology, however, there is a problem which causes a large amount of energy consumption of cluster head. In addition, in the sparsely deployed sensor field, mesh topology can be more energy-efficient than cluster topology. In this paper, we propose a Hybrid Cluster Mesh (HCM) scheme, which recognizes the density of neighbor nodes and each node decides its topology itself, and HCM-RO (reorganization) scheme which reorganizes clusters. Simulation results show that the proposed hybrid topology control scheme is more energy-efficient than each topology of cluster or mesh.