Abstract
This paper presents a Distributed Efficient Multi hop Clustering (DEMC) protocol for mobile wireless sensor networks. An overwhelming majority of current research on sensor networks considers static networks only, while we consider mobile environment. DEMC is distributed, works well with mobile nodes, and has a recovery mechanism that is used to reduce the packet loss during inter cluster communication. The recovery mechanism also improves the connectivity between cluster heads during inter cluster communication. On average, each node sends less than one message during clustering, and does not rely on periodic hello messages. As a result reducing number of transmissions leads to energy efficiency. Simulation results show that DEMC is energy efficient, incurs less packet loss, increases packet delivery ratio, and exhibits robustness against moderate to high mobility of nodes.