Energy Aware and Trust Based Cluster Head Selection for Ad-hoc Sensor Networks

Clustering provides an efficient management method and energy balancing scheme for ad-hoc sensor networks. Cluster head is the most important role in a cluster and it acts as a local data coordinator and maintains cluster information. Once malicious nodes or lower energy nodes are selected as cluster heads, the system would be greatly affected. Thus selection of trusted cluster heads with proper residual energy becomes critical for the overall network performance. In this research, we propose an energy aware and trust based cluster head selection method for ad-hoc sensor networks. The proposed method relies on an effective distributed trust model for cluster head selection and it also considers the residual energy in the selection process. Simulations show that more trusted nodes with proper residual energy are selected as cluster heads, which in turn provides a higher packet delivery ratio from the cluster member nodes to the base station and a better balanced energy consumption of the network.