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Layered Energy Balanced Unequal Clustering and Routing LEBUCR) Protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks
Gunjan, Ajay K Sharma and Karan Verma

Wireless Sensor Networks is a promising and rapidly growing field due to a large number of applications. The most critical design issue in WSNs is energy conservation. Unequal clustering is the most efficient data communication technique for energy conservation in WSNs, wherein cluster size varies proportionally to the distance from the base station, to avoid the creation of energy holes/hot-spots. In this paper, we have developed a Layered Energy Balanced Unequal Clustering and Routing (LEBUCR) Protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks. The major contribution of this algorithm is threefold. To minimize the number of long-distance transmissions, the network topology is divided into layers and cluster head is selected from each layer. To make the protocol efficient irrespective of the position of the base station, the algorithm utilizes both flat and hierarchical clustering in the cluster formation stage. To avoid nodes and to minimize routing overhead, relay nodes are chosen in the route construction stage. Simulation results and analysis indicates that the proposed algorithm outperforms the established algorithms like Direct propagation, LEACH, TL-LEACH, EEUCLC in terms of network lifetime, energy consumption and scalability.

Keywords: Wireless sensor networks, Unequal clustering, Energy-hole, hot-spot problem