RED: Residual Energy and Distance Based Clustering to Avoid Energy Hole Problem in Self-organized Wireless Sensor Networks

Self-Organized Wireless Sensor Network (SOWSN) is a system of sensor nodes that takes global decisions through local interactions without involvement of any central entity. Wireless sensor nodes have constrained processing capability and energy. The key characteristic used to evaluate performance of Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) is its lifetime which depends on residual energy of nodes; hence the major challenge in WSN is the efficient use of available energy. Node clustering saves energy and also shows self-organization because global decision like Cluster Head (CH) selection is taken through mutual communication between nodes. In this paper, a new clustering method based on self-organization is implemented to boost lifetime of WSN. Sensor network is divided into regions. Cluster formation relies on Residual Energy (RE) and nearest Distance (D) from CH. Node with highest residual energy becomes CH. Rest nodes join the nearest CH. Clusters are broken when residual energy of CH falls below threshold energy; causing the sensor network to get self-organized into new clusters. RED also focuses to solve the energy hole problem caused due to higher energy consumption by CHs near Sink Node or Base Station (BS).