Performance of Distributed Clustering Protocol in Heterogeneous Wireless Sensor Networks

Energy efficiency in heterogeneous network is considered as one of the main issues when deploying the wireless sensor network. In heterogeneous network, the random distribution of initial energy at each node could lead to an instability of the network. Therefore, a resonable policy must be established in order to maintain the fairness in energy consumption and extend the working time of each node in the network. In this paper, we evaluate the performance of the distributed clustering protocol (DCP) in heterogeneous network on different scenarios. Simulation results are compared with the results of a LEACH protocol in a heterogeneous network. In addition, the performance of system in heterogeneous network are also compared with the homogeneous network to illustrate the effect of imbalance in the initial energy on the life time of each node in the system. The result illustrates that the DCP protocol demonstrates better performance than LEACH protocol in both the heterogeneous and the homogeneous networks.