International Journal of Scientific Research Engineering & Technology (IJSRET), ISSN 2278 0882

Volume 5, Issue 1, January 2016

REVIEW OF VARIOUS HIERARCHICAL CLUSTERING

ALGORITHMS FOR WIRELESS SENSOR NETWORKS
Vikas Yadav1, Dr. Kanika Sharma2
ME Research Scholar Department of ECE, NITTTR Chandigarh, India
2
Assistant Professor Department of ECE, NITTTR Chandigarh, India

ABSTRACT
In a hierarchical clustering architecture, higher residual
energy nodes can be used to process and send the
information while low residual energy nodes can be
used to perform the sensing in the proximity of the
target. This means that creation of clusters and
assigning special tasks to cluster heads can greatly
contribute to overall system lifetime, and energy
efficiency
scalability,.
Hierarchical
clustering
algorithm is an efficient way to lower energy
consumption within a cluster and by performing data
aggregation and fusion in order to decrease the number
of transmitted messages to the BS. Hierarchical
clustering algorithm is mainly two-layer clustering
where one layer is used to select cluster heads and the
other layer is used for routing. Numbers of routing,
power management, and data dissemination clustering
have been specifically designed for WSNs where
energy awareness is an essential design issue. The
focus has been given to the hierarchical clustering
which might differ depending on the application and
network architecture. In this paper we discuss some of
the hierarchical clustering algorithms that give an
overview of different hierarchical clustering algorithm
strategies which is used in WSN and their performance
is compared based on metrics such as scalability, data
aggregation, power usage, multipath etc.
Keywords: Wireless Sensor Network,
Clustering Algorithm, Cluster-Head.

I.

LEACH,

INTRODUCTION

In Current years, wireless sensor networks become the

furthermost exciting networking technologies to
forward the sensed collected data to the base station
with restricted energy capacity. Recent advances in
wireless communications and electronics have enabled
the development of low cost, low power,
multifunctional sensor nodes [1]. Wireless Sensor
Networks (WSNs), have a wide range of applications
in a variety of fields including physiological
monitoring, environmental applications, military
applications and home security.
A sensor network is composed of a large number of
sensors that are densely deployed either inside the
phenomenon or very close to it [1]. This network
should function for as long as possible because
recharging the node batteries may be inconvenient or

impossible [2]. So energy plays an important role in

WSNs and preserving each nodes energy is an
important goal that must be considered [3]. Recently,
various clustering techniques to reduce energy
consumption of sensor nodes have been proposed.

Fig 1 Wireless Sensor Network Architecture

II.

HIERARCHICAL
ALGORITHMS

CLUSTERING

A). LEACH
The operation of LEACH is broken up into rounds,
where each round begins with a setup phase, when the
clusters are organized, followed by a steady-state
phase, when data transfers to the base station occur. In
order to minimize overhead, the steady-state phase is
long compared to the set-up phase [1].
a) Advertisement Phase
Initially, when clusters are being created, each node
decides whether or not to become a cluster-head for
the current round. This decision is based on the
suggested percentage of cluster heads for the network
(determined a priori) and the number of times the node
has been a cluster-head so far. This decision is made
by the node n choosing a random number between 0
and 1.If the number is less than a threshold T (n), the
node becomes a cluster-head for the current round. The
threshold is set as [1]:
P
if n G
T n = 1 r mod 1
P
0
otherwise
Where P = the desired percentage of cluster heads
(e.g., P = 0.05), r = the current round, and G is the set
of nodes that have not been cluster-heads in the last
1/P rounds. Using this threshold, each node will be a
cluster-head at some point within 1/P rounds. During

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International Journal of Scientific Research Engineering & Technology (IJSRET), ISSN 2278 0882
Volume 5, Issue 1, January 2016

round 0 (r = 0), each node has a probability P of

becoming a cluster-head. The nodes that are clusterheads in round 0 cannot be cluster-heads for the next
1/P rounds. Thus the probability that the remaining
nodes are cluster-heads must be increased, since there
are fewer nodes that are eligible to become clusterheads. After 1/P -1 rounds, T=1 for any nodes that
have not yet been cluster-heads, and after 1/P rounds,
all nodes are once again eligible to become clusterheads. Future versions of this work will include an
energy-based threshold to account for non-uniform
energy nodes. In this case, we are assuming that all
nodes begin with the same amount of energy and being
a cluster-head removes approximately the same
amount of energy for each node. Each node that has
elected itself a cluster-head for the current round
broadcasts an advertisement message to the rest of the
nodes. For this cluster-head-advertisement phase, the
cluster-heads use a CSMA MAC protocol, and all
cluster-heads transmit their advertisement using the
same transmit energy. The non-cluster-head nodes
must keep their receivers on during this phase of set-up
to hear the advertisements of all the cluster-head
nodes. After this phase is complete, each non-clusterhead node decides the cluster to which it will belong
for this round. This decision is based on the received
signal strength of the advertisement. Assuming
symmetric propagation channels, the cluster-head
advertisement heard with the largest signal strength is
the cluster-head to whom the minimum amount of
transmitted energy is needed for communication. In the
case of ties, a random cluster-head is chosen. Each
non-cluster-head node decides the cluster to which it
will belong for this round. This decision is based on
the received signal strength of the Advertisement.
Assuming symmetric propagation channels, the
cluster-head advertisement heard with the largest
signal strength is the cluster-head to whom the
minimum amount of transmitted energy is needed for
communication. In the case of ties, a random clusterhead is chosen.
b) Cluster Setup Phase
After each node has decided to which cluster it
belongs, it must inform the cluster-head node that it
will be a member of the cluster. Each node transmits
this information back to the cluster-head again using a
CSMA MAC protocol. During this phase, all clusterhead nodes must keep their receivers ON [1].
c) Schedule Creation
The cluster-head node receives all the messages for
nodes that would like to be included in the cluster.
Based on the number of nodes in the cluster, the
cluster head node creates a TDMA schedule telling
each node when it can transmit. This schedule is
broadcast back to the nodes in the cluster [1].

d) Data Transmission
Once the clusters are created and the TDMA schedule
is fixed, data transmission can begin. Assuming nodes
always have data to send, they send it during their
allocated transmission time to the cluster head. This
transmission uses a minimal amount of energy (chosen
based on the received strength of the cluster-head
advertisement). The radio of each non-cluster-head
node can be turned off until the nodes allocated
transmission time, thus minimizing energy dissipation
in these nodes. The cluster-head node must keep its
receiver on to receive all the data from the nodes in the
cluster [1].
When all the data has been received, the cluster head
node performs signal processing functions to compress
the data into a single signal. For example, if the data
are audio or seismic signals, the cluster-head node can
beam form the individual signals to generate a
composite signal. This composite signal is sent to the
base station. Since the base station is far away, this is a
high energy transmission. This is the steady-state
operation of LEACH networks. After a certain time,
which is determined a priori, the next round begins
with each node determining if it should be a clusterhead for this round and advertising this information.
B). LEACH-R
Ningbo WANG etal. in [1] had discussed an improved
protocol LEACH-R based on LEACH to improve the
selection of cluster head and proposes to choose
relaying node compare to LEACH. In this algorithm
Low energy nodes being selected as cluster-head is
reduced. This algorithm balances network energy
consumption and extends the network life cycle more
effectively. But this increases the complexity of the
algorithm.
C). p LEACH
It is an improved LEACH (LEACH-C) algorithm
called partition-based LEACH (pLEACH), which
firstly partitions the network into optimal number of
sectors, and then selects the node with the highest
energy as the head for each sector, using the
centralized calculations. This proposed algorithm
achieves much better performance of Wireless Sensor
Network in terms of the energy dissipation, network
lifetime and quality of communication.
D). Ex-LEACH
Mohammad Javad Hajikhani etal. in [3] had proposed
an energy efficient cluster-head selection algorithm
which is an extension to the LEACH is proposed. The
proposed algorithm is based on the differentiation of
each nodes energy. In this algorithm the remaining
energy of nodes and average residual energy of the
neighboring nodes is used for cluster head selections.
In the proposed algorithm, each node cares about its

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International Journal of Scientific Research Engineering & Technology (IJSRET), ISSN 2278 0882
Volume 5, Issue 1, January 2016

neighboring nodes, without getting any information

from them and the nodes are dependent on each other.

G). ESCAL
Chao Jing etal. in [6] proposed based on LEACH, a
modified clustering algorithm which is named
ESCAL(Energy-Saving Clustering Algorithm Based
on LEACH). In ESCAL, CHs would not communicate
with BS (Base Station) directly, but transfer
aggregated data to the nearest node in term of received
signal strength; then this selected nearest node will
compress and forward the data to BS. According to
this mechanism, the transmitting distance between
CHs and the base station is greatly shortened, and
therefore the energy dissipation of entire network will
be remarkably reduced. The energy dissipation of
ESCAL is no more than half of that of LEACH.

E). EC
It is a distributed clustering algorithm, Energy-efficient
Clustering (EC), that determines suitable cluster sizes
depending on the hop distance to the data sink, while
achieving approximate equalization of node lifetimes
and reduced energy consumption levels [4].This
algorithm is suitable for multihop data delivery
scenarios in clustered WSNs. Proposed algorithm is
energy-efficient but more complex for other than
multihop data delivery scenarios.
F). EECA
An Energy Efficient Clustering Algorithm named
EECA [7] for short which contains two steps: first, the
node with the highest residual energy is selected as the
anchor cluster-head, and the candidate cluster-heads
are determined according to their residual energy as
well as the distance from the anchor cluster-head;
second, the candidate cluster-heads compete to be the
cluster-heads via a delayed broadcast mechanism.
Comparing with the well-known protocol LEACH, the
two-step cluster-head selection mechanism balances
the distribution of the cluster-heads. Simulations show
that the proposed algorithm can prolong the network
lifetime significantly.

III.

IV.

H). MH-LEACH
MH-LEACH(Multi Hop Low Energy Adaptive
Clustering Hierarchy) is one new algorithm based on
classical Low Energy Adaptive Clustering Hierarchy
(LEACH)[7]. It selects cluster head with taking into
account the energy and multi-hop combined with
simple hop in cluster. This algorithm MH-LEACH
compared to LEACH has better effect on prolonging
the network lifetime and improving the energy
utilization rate.

COMPARISON OF VARIOUS HIERARCHICAL CLUSTERING ALGORITHMS

Algorithms

BS is Power
Fixed Usage
or
Not

Data
Aggregation

Localization

Scalability

Multipath

State
Complexity

LEACH
LEACH-R
pLEACH
Ex-LEACH
EC
EECA
ESCAL
MHLEACH

Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes

Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes

Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes

Good
Good
Good
Good
Good
Good
Good
Good

No
No
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes

CHs
CHs
CHs
CHs
CHs
CHs
Low
CHs

Maximum
Maximum
Maximum
Maximum
N/A
N/A
Maximum
Maximum

CONCLUSION

REFERENCES

In this paper we discussed various hierarchical

clustering algorithm like LEACH, pLEACH, EC, ExLEACH, LEACH-R, EECA, ESCAL and MH-LEACH
for wireless sensor network. The main concern of this
survey to examine the data aggregation, mobility,
power usage, multipath, scalability and compare the
performance of all the hierarchical clustering
algorithms.

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International Journal of Scientific Research Engineering & Technology (IJSRET), ISSN 2278 0882
Volume 5, Issue 1, January 2016

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