Clustering objectives in wireless sensor networks: A survey and research direction analysis

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) typically include thousands of resource-constrained sensors to monitor their surroundings, collect data, and transfer it to remote servers for further processing. Although WSNs are considered highly flexible ad-hoc networks, network management has been a fundamental challenge in these types of net- works given the deployment size and the associated quality concerns such as resource management, scalability, and reliability. Topology management is considered a viable technique to address these concerns. Clustering is the most well-known topology management method in WSNs, grouping nodes to manage them and/or executing various tasks in a distributed manner, such as resource management. Although clustering techniques are mainly known to improve energy consumption, there are various quality-driven objectives that can be realized through clustering. In this paper, we review comprehensively existing WSN clustering techniques, their objectives and the network properties supported by those techniques. After refining more than 500 clustering techniques, we extract about 215 of them as the most important ones, which we further review, catergorize and classify based on clustering objectives and also the network properties such as mobility and heterogeneity. In addition, statistics are provided based on the chosen metrics, providing highly useful insights into the design of clustering techniques in WSNs.publishedVersio

A Distributed Heuristic Algorithm for Delay Constrained Energy Efficient Routing in Wireless Sensor Networks

Besides energy restriction, wireless sensor networks (WSNs) should be able to provide bounded end-to-end delay when they are used to support real-time applications such as early forest fire alarm systems. In this paper, we investigate the problem of finding the least energy consumption route subject to a delay constraint with low computational complexity in such networks. Based on the distance-vector routing approach, which has less computational complexity and message overhead, we propose a distributed heuristic algorithm called Delay Constrained Energy Efficient Routing (DCEER) in order to minimize the total energy consumption while meeting the end-to-end delay requirement. DCEER only requires a moderate amount of information at each sensor node and does not suffer from the excessive running time. We prove that our proposed algorithm always finishes within a finite time and the computation complexity is only O(n), where n is a divisor of the number of sensor nodes. By mathematical proof and simulation, we verify that DCEER is suitable for large-scale WSNs because the number of messages exchanged between sensor nodes are represented by a polynomial function. Furthermore, we evaluate our proposal to compare its performance with related protocols

An Efficient Analysis on Performance Metrics for optimized Wireless Sensor Network

Wireless Sensor Networks have the revolutionary significance in many new monitoring applications and self-organized systems. Based on the nature of application WSN are needed to support various levels of Quality of Services. Quality of service parameters are most significant aspect in WSN during data transmission from sensor nodes to sink. This paper surveys the factor on reliability, predictability, sustainability, optimal clustering and scheduling by analyzing various models existing in WSN. A network that satisfies all these Qos parameters ensures outstanding throughput in performance. We concluded by exploring some of the dimensions for research interest and addressed open issues ahead to enhance the performance of WSNs

Metaheuristics Techniques for Cluster Head Selection in WSN: A Survey

In recent years, Wireless sensor communication is growing expeditiously on the capability to gather information, communicate and transmit data effectively. Clustering is the main objective of improving the network lifespan in Wireless sensor network. It includes selecting the cluster head for each cluster in addition to grouping the nodes into clusters. The cluster head gathers data from the normal nodes in the cluster, and the gathered information is then transmitted to the base station. However, there are many reasons in effect opposing unsteady cluster head selection and dead nodes. The technique for selecting a cluster head takes into factors to consider including residual energy, neighbors’ nodes, and the distance between the base station to the regular nodes. In this study, we thoroughly investigated by number of methods of selecting a cluster head and constructing a cluster. Additionally, a quick performance assessment of the techniques' performance is given together with the methods' criteria, advantages, and future directions

A Survey and Future Directions on Clustering: From WSNs to IoT and Modern Networking Paradigms

Many Internet of Things (IoT) networks are created as an overlay over traditional ad-hoc networks such as Zigbee. Moreover, IoT networks can resemble ad-hoc networks over networks that support device-to-device (D2D) communication, e.g., D2D-enabled cellular networks and WiFi-Direct. In these ad-hoc types of IoT networks, efficient topology management is a crucial requirement, and in particular in massive scale deployments. Traditionally, clustering has been recognized as a common approach for topology management in ad-hoc networks, e.g., in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs). Topology management in WSNs and ad-hoc IoT networks has many design commonalities as both need to transfer data to the destination hop by hop. Thus, WSN clustering techniques can presumably be applied for topology management in ad-hoc IoT networks. This requires a comprehensive study on WSN clustering techniques and investigating their applicability to ad-hoc IoT networks. In this article, we conduct a survey of this field based on the objectives for clustering, such as reducing energy consumption and load balancing, as well as the network properties relevant for efficient clustering in IoT, such as network heterogeneity and mobility. Beyond that, we investigate the advantages and challenges of clustering when IoT is integrated with modern computing and communication technologies such as Blockchain, Fog/Edge computing, and 5G. This survey provides useful insights into research on IoT clustering, allows broader understanding of its design challenges for IoT networks, and sheds light on its future applications in modern technologies integrated with IoT.acceptedVersio

A Survey on Routing Protocols for Large-Scale Wireless Sensor Networks

With the advances in micro-electronics, wireless sensor devices have been made much smaller and more integrated, and large-scale wireless sensor networks (WSNs) based the cooperation among the significant amount of nodes have become a hot topic. “Large-scale” means mainly large area or high density of a network. Accordingly the routing protocols must scale well to the network scope extension and node density increases. A sensor node is normally energy-limited and cannot be recharged, and thus its energy consumption has a quite significant effect on the scalability of the protocol. To the best of our knowledge, currently the mainstream methods to solve the energy problem in large-scale WSNs are the hierarchical routing protocols. In a hierarchical routing protocol, all the nodes are divided into several groups with different assignment levels. The nodes within the high level are responsible for data aggregation and management work, and the low level nodes for sensing their surroundings and collecting information. The hierarchical routing protocols are proved to be more energy-efficient than flat ones in which all the nodes play the same role, especially in terms of the data aggregation and the flooding of the control packets. With focus on the hierarchical structure, in this paper we provide an insight into routing protocols designed specifically for large-scale WSNs. According to the different objectives, the protocols are generally classified based on different criteria such as control overhead reduction, energy consumption mitigation and energy balance. In order to gain a comprehensive understanding of each protocol, we highlight their innovative ideas, describe the underlying principles in detail and analyze their advantages and disadvantages. Moreover a comparison of each routing protocol is conducted to demonstrate the differences between the protocols in terms of message complexity, memory requirements, localization, data aggregation, clustering manner and other metrics. Finally some open issues in routing protocol design in large-scale wireless sensor networks and conclusions are proposed

Survey on Various Aspects of Clustering in Wireless Sensor Networks Employing Classical, Optimization, and Machine Learning Techniques

A wide range of academic scholars, engineers, scientific and technology communities are interested in energy utilization of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs). Their extensive research is going on in areas like scalability, coverage, energy efficiency, data communication, connection, load balancing, security, reliability and network lifespan. Individual researchers are searching for affordable methods to enhance the solutions to existing problems that show unique techniques, protocols, concepts, and algorithms in the wanted domain. Review studies typically offer complete, simple access or a solution to these problems. Taking into account this motivating factor and the effect of clustering on the decline of energy, this article focuses on clustering techniques using various wireless sensor networks aspects. The important contribution of this paper is to give a succinct overview of clustering