A forwarding station integrated with optimal cluster number selection in wireless sensor networks

In wireless sensor networks, power consumption is the most important issue. That is wireless sensors are normally deployed into unattended places where power of sensors is hard to be charged. Indeed, the network lifetime of wireless sensor networks equipped with city power or deployed into attended place is much longer than those wireless sensors equipped with batteries. In general, wireless sensor nodes are connected together and become a network after deployed into certain places. With the certain range places that wireless senor nodes deployed into, finding the optimal clusters can increase the entire network lifetime. Also, adding the forwarding station extends the network lifetime. Therefore, this paper proposes the integration of both the forwarding station and optimal clusters in ad-hoc wireless sensor networks. Simulation results show that the entire network lifetime proposed is extended in this paper compared to both optimal cluster number selection and normal forwarding station.