Abstract : Wireless sensor networks (WSN) are inheriting many application areas like environment observation, target tracking, border monitoring and battle field surveillance. To alleviate the problem of energy utilization and extending the lifetime of wireless sensor nodes, one approach is employing an effective clustering mechanism. In this paper variable power energy efficient clustering (VEEC) mechanism for wireless sensor networks has been proposed. It is a well distributed, energy efficient clustering algorithm which employs relay nodes, variable transmission power and single message transmission per node for setting up the cluster. The proposed scheme is compared with two existing distributed clustering algorithms LEACH and HEED. Simulation results clearly show an excellent improvement in average communication energy and the total energy of the wireless sensor system. Simulation study also shows the reduction in node death rate and prolongation in network lifetime compared to the two existing algorithms
