Energy Efficient Backoff Hierarchical Clustering Algorithms for Multi-Hop Wireless Sensor Networks

Compared with flat routing protocols, clustering is a fundamental performance improvement technique in wireless sensor networks, which can increase network scalability and lifetime. In this paper, we integrate the multi-hop technique with a backoff-based clustering algorithm to organize sensors. By using an adaptive backoff strategy, the algorithm not only realizes load balance among sensor node, but also achieves fairly uniform cluster head distribution across the network. Simulation results also demonstrate our algorithm is more energy-efficient than classical ones. Our algorithm is also easily extended to generate a hierarchy of cluster heads to obtain better network management and energy-efficiency.