Energy-Efficient Coalition Formation in Sensor Networks: a Game-Theoretic Approach

The most important challenge in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) is the energy constraint. Numerous solutions have been proposed to alleviate this problem, the most efficient of which is to cluster the sensor nodes. Although clustering in the realm of WSNs has widely been explored by researchers, a few effective mechanisms in grouping the nodes, including coalitional games, need more attention and research. This motivated us to employ cooperative games and to propose a Coalitional Game-Theoretic Clustering (CGTC) algorithm for WSNs. Basically two kinds of coalitions are formed regarding the location of sensor nodes, where local parameters play an important role in forming coalitions. Moreover, the Shapley value is adopted as the solution concept. The result of simulation confirms the effectiveness of CGTC in terms of energy efficiency.