Load-balanced multilayered clustering protocol to maximise the lifetime of wireless sensor networks

This paper introduces an innovative clustering protocol for load balancing in wireless sensor networks (WSNs). In the proposed protocol, square shape clusters of equal area are arranged in a multilayer fashion, and the base station is at the centre of the network. The equal area of square clusters offers a nearly equal number of member nodes in each cluster that leads to comparable energy consumption at cluster heads for transmitting and receiving data from member nodes. This paper also introduces a new routing approach in which hop selection is based on the difference of angle between the source and destination cluster heads with respect to a particular point. The efficiency of the proposed protocol concerning network lifetime and energy consumption is evaluated and compared with low-energy adaptive clustering hierarchy (LEACH), enhanced-modified LEACH (E-MODLEACH) and least distance clustering (LDC). The proposed protocol's efficiency is also evaluated for different optimisation algorithms.