Cliques and clusters based hierarchical scheme for sensor networks partitioning

Abstract

The hierarchical clustering for wireless sensors networks is treated to solve the scalability problem in routing protocols for multi-hop wireless networks. Also a clustering-based technique is proposed to provide location management of devices for QoS support. To the best of our knowledge there is no protocol that combines the hierarchical partitioning into clusters and cliques taking into account the size of cliques and clusters (a clique is a network where every node can communicate directly with every other node in the same clique). In this paper, we propose a new partitioning scheme motivated by the need to have minimum and maximum size for cliques and clusters. In fact, this size has a direct effect on energy consumption. Indeed, for a large size of clique or cluster the cluster head should register the identities of its cluster members and manage them. That is not always feasible because sensor networks have a very limited memory capacity and energy. In addition, limiting the number of sensors in each clique or cluster avoids a significant number of cluster head re-election where the energy will be the parameter of election. So the characteristics of WSN are not satisfied, the aim of our work is to deal with these cases.