Problem Representation
Using the clustering mechanism [9] has been widely
pursued by the research community in order to achieve the
network scalability and to maximize the network
lifetime. In each cluster a node acts as a Cluster Head
which is responsible for collecting data from node members
and transmitting them to the BS .In a network
topology, it is difficult to find the optimal number of the CHs
and their locations.
As genetic algorithms have been successfully applied to
many hard problems. We propose to apply a GA to the
problem of finding optimum number of CHs based on
minimizing the communication consumption energy of all
sensor nodes to efficiently maximize the network lifetime and
to improve the stability period. In our proposed algorithm, each
round begins with a set-up phase, when the BS finds the
locations of CHs and assigns members nodes of each CH, the
following phase is the steady-state phase which is responsible
for the transmission of the sensed data to CHs and the
collection of data in frames by the CHs and the transmission of
these frames to the BS as shown in Figure below: