Abstract

In this paper, a Wireless Sensor Network using a multi-hop intra-cluster communication is simulated and investigated. The number of hop count is not limited and the formation of clusters has been analyzed for different values of the number of the nodes, the node distributions and the radius of clusters. The results show that the number of cluster heads increases as the radius of cluster decreases. For high values of cluster radius, some of the nodes chooses to join a cluster having large number of hops, while the cluster heads are not optimally located for medium values of cluster radius. In the light of the obtained results, some suggestions can be made, including using a larger communication radius for the cluster heads than the sensor nodes, limiting the hop count for intra-cluster communication and increasing the weight of the parameter of the intracluster communication cost for the election of cluster heads