Cluster-Head Rotation Scheme for Beacon-Enabled IEEE 802.15.4 Networks

In the IEEE 802.15.4 standard, the role of a cluster-head is primarily to aggregate data from other devices in the cluster and transmit the aggregated data towards the PAN coordinator. However, the cluster-heads quickly depletes its energy compared to the ordinary devices as they remain active for longer duration for transmission and aggregation of data. In order to reduce the imbalance of power consumption between the cluster-head and the cluster member devices, the role of cluster-head needs to rotated among the available devices. Previous works in this direction, have considered single hop communication networks and majority are based on the threshold derived from the residual energy of the present cluster-head. In this paper, we propose an efficient cluster-head rotation algorithm that considers coverage, residual energy, inter-cluster distance and transmission overhead during CH selection for IEEE 802.15.4 networks.