Location-Based Spiral Clustering Algorithm for Avoiding Inter-Cluster Collisions in WSNs

Wireless sensor networks (WSN) consist of a large amount of sensor nodes distributed in a certain region. Due to the limited battery power of a sensor node, lots of energy-efficient schemes have been studied. Clustering is primarily used for energy efficiency purpose. However, clustering in WSNs faces several unattained issues, such as ensuring connectivity and scheduling inter-cluster transmissions. In this paper, we propose a location-based spiral clustering (LBSC) algorithm for improving connectivity and avoiding inter-cluster collisions. It also provides reliable location aware routing paths from all cluster heads to a sink node during cluster formation. Proposed algorithm can simultaneously make clusters in four spiral directions from the center of sensor field by using the location information and residual energy level of neighbor sensor nodes. Three logical addresses are used for categorizing the clusters into four global groups and scheduling the intra- and inter-cluster transmission time for each cluster. We evaluated the performance with simulations and compared it with other algorithms.