Abstract
Energy efficiency in specific clustering protocols is highly desired in wireless sensor networks. Most existing clustering protocols periodically form clusters and statically assign cluster heads (CHs) and thus are not energy efficient. Every non-CH node of these protocols sends data to the CH in every time slot of a frame allocated to them using the time division multiple access scheme, which is an energy-consuming process. Moreover, these protocols do not provide any fault tolerance mechanism. Considering these limitations, we have proposed an efficient fault-tolerant and energy-efficient clustering protocol for a wireless sensor network. The performance of the proposed protocol was tested by means of a simulation and compared against the low energy adaptive clustering hierarchy and dynamic static clustering protocols. Simulation results showed that the fault-tolerant and energy-efficient clustering protocol has better performance than both the low energy adaptive clustering hierarchy and dynamic static clustering protocols in terms of energy efficiency and reliability. Copyright (c) 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.