Energy-Efficient Intra-Cluster Data Gathering of Wireless Sensor Networks

Sensor nodes of Wireless Sensor Networks have limited battery power, so energy efficiency is mainly considered in the design. A novel mechanism of intra-cluster data gathering is designed for reducing the energy consumption and prolonging the network lifetime. Firstly, each cluster head acts continuously as local control center and will not be replaced by the candidate cluster head until its operation times reach its optimum value, thus the energy consumption ratio of gathering data to broadcasting message is improved. Furthermore, according to the historical data, the mutual supportability of node is obtained by its cluster head through the correlation function. And then, the radios of incompatible nodes with low mutual supportabilities and the redundant node with high mutual supportabilities can be turned off for several rounds to reduce the intra-cluster communication consumption. Finally, the simulation results demonstrate that the mechanism can effectively reduce the energy consumption used for intra-cluster broadcasting message and gathering data, and prolong the network lifetime.