Energy Efficient Routing with Non-Uniform Cluster Size for Underground Coal Mine Environment

Abstract

Researchers have worked on routing issues for adhoc-networks, VANET’s, and Wireless Sensor Networks in a normal scenario; recently there has been a recent trend towards the study on underground wireless networks and proposals for design and development for Wireless Underground Sensor Networks. This work highlights the concept of wireless underground sensor network in the coal mine environment, its application and various protocols related to underground coal mine environment have been studied. No doubt, the WUSN has its own share of challenges and the research has just started. This work focuses on reducing the power consumption in underground wireless sensor networks. LEACH (Low-Energy Adaptive Clustering Hierarchy), has been extended to accommodate non-uniform cluster size for underground coal mine environment. The concept of high energy node is introduced and by applying the non-uniform clustering an increase in stability factor of network by about 30 % is achieved.