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Over the last couple of decades, clustering-based protocols are believed to be the best for heterogeneous wireless sensor networks (WSNs) because they work on the principle of divide and conquer. In this study, the authors propose and evaluate two new clustering-based protocols for heterogeneous WSNs, which are called single-hop energy-efficient clustering protocol (S-EECP) and multi-hop energy-efficient clustering protocol (M-EECP). In S-EECP, the cluster heads (CHs) are elected by a weighted probability based on the ratio between residual energy of each node and average energy of the network. The nodes with high initial energy and residual energy will have more chances to be elected as CHs than nodes with low energy whereas in M-EECP, the elected CHs communicate the data packets to the base station via multi-hop communication approach. To analyse the lifetime of the network, the authors assume three types of sensor nodes equipped with different battery energy. Finally, simulation results indicate that the authors protocols prolong network lifetime, and achieve load balance among the CHs better than the existing clustering protocols.

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