An Energy-Efficient Cluster Head Selection Scheme for Energy-Harvesting Wireless Sensor Networks

Concerning the large amount of energy consumption during the cluster head selection stage and the unequal harvested energy among nodes in energy-harvesting wireless sensor networks (EH-WSNs), an energy- efficient cluster head selection scheme called EECHS is proposed in this paper. The scheme divides all nodes from one cluster into three types: cluster head (CH), cluster member (CM), and scheduling node (SN). The SN is designed to monitor and store real-time information about the residual energy of all nodes, including CMs and the CH, in the same cluster. In the CH selection stage, the SN specifies a corresponding CM as the new CH according to the monitored results, thereby reducing the energy consumption caused by CH selection. In this way, the task of CH selection is migrated from CHs to SNs and, thus, the CHs can preserve more energy for data forwarding. Moreover, the EECHS adjusts the transmission radius of some nodes dynamically to prevent these nodes from discarding the harvested energy if their batteries are fully charged. A series of experiments were conducted to verify the effectiveness of the proposed EECHS, and the results demonstrate that EECHS can provide an efficient CH selection scheme for EH-WSNs and is able to use the harvested energy more efficiently than corresponding competitors.