Modeling the impact of clustering on the lifetime of wireless sensor networks

Abstract

Energy efficiency and network lifetime are the most critical issues for Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs). Clustering is one of the well-known techniques for reducing energy consumption of the network and improving its lifetime as well. However, clustering itself is time- and energy-consuming. For this reason, it is crucial to determine an appropriate clustering frequency so that the network lifetime is maximized. We formulate this problem and sketch a guideline on acquiring an optimal number of clusterings.