A New Fuzzy Clustering Algorithm to Enhance Lifetime of Wireless Sensor Networks

Due to limitations of resource in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) enhancing the network lifetime has been of great concern. An efficient routing algorithm is known as clustering algorithm based routing protocol. In which getting optimal cluster heads (CHs) and a number of them has been defiance. In this paper, a new fuzzy clustering algorithm is proposed to maximize the lifetime of WSNs. Network field in this approach, contains two types of sensors: free sensors that communicate directly with sink, and clustered sensors that send the sensed data to the sink through CHs which are preselected. This approach uses fuzzy logic to select free sensor nodes and CHs with four fuzzy parameters. These parameters are energy level of sink and sensor proximity to the sink in terms of free sensors selection, and energy level of sensor node and centrality of sensors in terms of CHs selection. The main goal of our algorithm is to extend the lifetime of WSNs by minimizing distributing the workload on CHs. The simulation results show that our proposed is more efficient than SET protocol.