An Improved Three-Layer Clustering Hierarchy for Wireless Sensor Networks: A Proposed Framework

Hierarchical based formation is the most efficient way and widely used approach to minimize the total energy consumed, especially in a large sensor network. Most of the previous work focused on two-layer clustering approaches whereas only very few methods focused on three-layer. In this paper, we propose an improved framework for a three-layer hierarchical based formation. In our proposed framework, we introduce a dispersed hierarchical approach for the lower level head selection and an enhanced feature of deploying grid nodes that is responsible to transmit sensed information of the sensor nodes in that particular cluster to the base station (BS) for further data analysis and generating reports. Our simulation results show that our proposed approach minimizes the total energy consumption of the sensor nodes, thereby improving the lifetime of the sensor network. Therefore, this proposed framework can be further applied to large-scale wireless sensor networks (WSN's).