A Head Scheduling Scheme for Heterogeneous Clustered Sensor Networks

Organizing wireless sensor networks into clusters enables the efficient utilization of the limited energy resources of the deployed sensor nodes. If the network is organized into heterogeneous clusters, where some more powerful nodes take on the cluster head role to control network operation, it is important to ensure that energy dissipation of these cluster heads and "critical sensor nodes" is balanced. We propose a Cluster Head Scheduling scheme to determine which cluster head should be turned off or on. The proposed mechanism is based on the coverage information as well as residual battery power, which can lead to more uniform energy dissipation among cluster head nodes and critical sensor nodes, thus increasing network lifetime. Moreover, the proposed scheme strengthens the robustness of heterogeneous sensor networks.