Abstract
In smart Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs), clustering is one of the most power efficient techniques which minimize the transmission ranges of sensor nodes. Instead of sending packets directly to the BS with high power levels, sensor nodes in the sensing filed can be organized in groups (i.e. clusters), where Cluster Heads (CHs) manage the transmission by aggregating the whole group of packets and retransmit them to the Base Station (BS). Therefore, the clustering technique solve the problem that nodes close to the BS consume a large amount of power due to the need to be active most of the time to retransmit packets to the BS (i.e. sink hole problem). In this paper, we propose a novel Raining Energy Cluster Head Selection (RECHS) protocol which is based on a simple Statistical Discrimination (SD) metric which detects collided packets before decoding as well as the Multi-Dimensional Slotted ALOHA (MDSA) MAC protocol which organizes the access to the communication channel. Hence, both reception and transmission power consumption will be minimized remarkably. In addition, in RECHS protocol, a simple Cluster Head (CH) selection algorithm is proposed which is based on the ratio between the remaining energy of every member (node) in a cluster and the initial (start-up) energy as well as the minimum distance between the CH and the sink node. In this paper, we will show how the proposed CH selection mechanism in RECHS protocol along with the SD technique and the MDSA MAC protocol overcomes some well-known protocols such as LEACH where a CH is selected in a distributed (i.e. random) fashion and the MAC protocol is TDMA. In particular, we will show how the performance of RECHS protocol overcomes LEACH protocol in terms of the percentage of alive nodes, the average number of successfully arrived packets to the BS (i.e. the throughput), and the average residual energy of the network per simulation round.