Enhancing Coverage Using Weight Based Clustering in Wireless Sensor Networks

Energy conservation in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) is a fundamental issue. For certain surveillance applications in WSN, coverage lifetime is an important issue and this is related to energy consumption significantly. In order to handle these two interlinked aspects in WSN, a new scheme named Weight based Coverage Enhancing Protocol (WCEP) has been introduced. The WCEP aims to obtain longer full coverage and better network life time. The WCEP is based on assigning different weight values to certain governing parameters which are residual energy, overlapping degree, node density and degree of sensor node. These governing parameters affect the energy and coverage aspects predominantly. Further, these four different parameters are prime elements in cluster formation process and node scheduling mechanisms. The weight values help in selection of an optimal group of Cluster Heads and Cluster Members, which result in enhancement of complete coverage lifetime. The simulation results indicate that WCEP performs better in terms of energy consumption also. The enhancement of value 24% in full coverage lifetime has been obtained as compared to established existing techniques.