An Insight on Clustering Protocols in Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) have drawn the attention of many researchers as well as general users in recent years. Since WSN has a wide range of applications, including environmental monitoring, medical applications, and surveillance, their usage is not limited. As energy is a major constraint in WSN, it is necessary to employ techniques that reduce energy consumption in order to extend the network's lifetime. Clustering, data aggregation, duty cycling, load balancing, and efficient routing are some of the techniques used to reduce energy consumption. In this paper, we discuss in details about clustering, its properties, the existing clustering protocols. The clustering protocols that support data aggregation will also be discussed. The paper concludes with considering the impact of clustering and data aggregation in WSN.