Edinburgh Napier University

  In Wireless Sensor Networks, clustering sensor nodes into disjoint groups is widely used to achieve load balance and increase network lifetime. In particular, traditional unequal clustering approaches where small clusters located close to the base station suffer from rapid energy depletion compared to others.To overcome the traffic load problem of near base station clusters, we propose a new two level unequal cluster lightweight approach based on a threshold defined by the base station and using nodes’s residual energy and the distance from base station. Moreover, we developed a new re-clustering technique where Cluster heads rotate locally in each cluster on a per level basis. Simulation results shows that the proposed mechanism outperforms its counterpart algorithms.