A Virtual Cluster Head Election Scheme for Energy-Efficient Routing in Wireless Sensor Networks

In emerging IoT era, Wireless Sensor Networks, aka WSNs are deployed for gathering data in various environments, in which efficient cluster routing mechanisms are deployed to prolong the network lifetime and improve the stability. Most existing studies focus on homogeneous WSNs. Some research workes achieved good performance based on the assumption of equal initial power and/or predefined ratio in types of node, these mechanisms are not flexible. Besides, existed works rarely deal with cluster head distribution. LEACH-C achieved the best cluster head distribution with a built-in GPS receiver in all sensors, but much higher cost and complexity are significant drawbacks. In this work, we proposed a Virtual Cluster Head Election Scheme that provides an energy-efficient clustering algorithm and considers cluster head distribution in WSNs. Simulation results show that our scheme balances the distribution of cluster heads and chooses those sensors with relative higher energy as cluster heads, and achieves a remarkable improvement on both network lifetime and data throughput.