DEHCIC: A distributed energy-aware hexagon based clustering algorithm to improve coverage in wireless sensor networks

Due to the random deployment of Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) nodes in dangerous and inaccessible environments and their sensing radius limitations, complete coverage of the monitoring area cannot be achieved. Clustering techniques, applying the mobile nodes, and adjusting the sensing radius of sensor nodes are regarded as practical techniques to improve the coverage and reduce the energy consumption. The challenges including, how to grouping the nodes, selecting the cluster heads, managing the mobility of mobile nodes, and scheduling sleep intervals should be considered in the hybrid techniques to improve the coverage with minimum overlapping. In this paper, we propose a DEHCIC (Distributed Energy-aware Hexagon based Clustering algorithm to Improve Coverage) algorithm that considers energy and topological features such as the number of mobile neighbor nodes and number of neighbor nodes for electing the cluster heads. In addition, DEHCIC attempts to cover the holes as much as possible by the static sensor nodes so that if it is not possible, the closest mobile will cover the coverage holes. Moreover, the DEHCIC algorithm retains the sensor nodes in the active mode that cover the interest points; also, it puts others into the low-powered sleep mode. The simulation results show that the proposed algorithm reduces dependency on the movement of mobile nodes and with the minimum number of active nodes can prolong the coverage lifetime and improve the network coverage effectively.