An energy-aware protocol for data gathering applications in wireless sensor networks

Data gathering is a major function of many applications in wireless sensor networks (WSNs). The most important issue in designing a data gathering algorithm is how to save energy of sensor nodes while meeting the requirement of applications/users such as sensing area coverage. In this paper, we propose a novel hierarchical clustering protocol for long-lived sensor network. EAP achieves a good performance in terms of lifetime by minimizing energy consumption for in-network communications and balancing the energy load among all nodes. EAP introduces a new clustering parameter for cluster head election, which can better handle the heterogeneous energy capacities. Furthermore, it also introduces a simple but efficient approach, namely intra-cluster coverage to cope with the area coverage problem. We evaluate the performance of the proposed protocol using a simple temperature sensing application. Simulation results show that our protocol significantly outperforms LEACH and HEED in terms of network lifetime and the amount of data gathered.