Clustering Protocols in Wireless Sensor Networks: A Survey

In recent years, the applications of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) have grown enormously. In WSNs there is one mechanism used to enlarge the lifespan of network and provide more efficient functioning procedures that is clustering. Clustering is a process to subdivide the sensing field of sensor network into number of clusters. Each cluster selects a leader called cluster head. A cluster head may be elected by the sensor node in the cluster or pre assigned by the network designer. Optimized Clustering can save lot of energy in the network. In our paper we have surveyed various clustering protocols for wireless sensor networks and compared on various parameters like cluster count, cluster size, cluster density, message count, node deployment, heterogeneity of nodes, location awareness and cluster head selection process etc.