To Cluster or Not to Cluster: A Hybrid Clustering Protocol for WSN

Abstract

Clustering protocols in wireless sensors networks (WSN) have dominated as a tailored routing protocols to harvest and route data from sensorsŠ nodes to the sink station. A lot of clustering protocols have been proposed in the literature. However, does clustering algorithms work correctly in all cases? In other words, is it necessary for the nodes to be clustered during the network lifetime? In this work, a new Hybrid Clustering Routing Protocol (HCP) is proposed. The new protocol consists of two main phases; cluster formation and data forwarding. In the first phase, sensorsŠ nodes decide to forward the traffic to the cluster head or directly to the sink node according to a threshold value. In this case, if the number of nodes in the network becomes small and scattered, no clustering will be performed. We simulated HCP and compared its performance with LEACH and LEACH-T. The results show reduction in network power consumption and an increase of the network lifetime by 30%.