An FED-Based Cluster Head Selection and Power Control Scheme for Massive MTC Networks

In cluster based massive machine type communications (MTC) networks, cluster heads (CHs) consume more energy than cluster members (CMs) to forward all data in the cluster. Therefore, inappropriate CHs will certainly aggravate the unevenness of the network energy distribution, intensively shortening the network lifetime. A well designed CH selection and subsequent power control scheme has been demonstrated to be effective in coping with this challenge. Different from the existing schemes in which the network status information of only a single round was considered to select CHs, in this article, all transmission rounds before the first death of MTC devices are taken into account to determine a CH index table. Specifically, considering that the first energy drain (FED) lifetime is a key indicator for the network to capture complete information, an FED-based CH selection scheme is proposed to optimize network lifetime, where the CH index table is obtained to predetermine the index of the CH in every round. Then, a power control scheme is also proposed to further extend the network lifetime with the constraint of transmission time. Finally, extensive simulations verify the superiority of the proposed scheme in terms of FED lifetime and successfully delivered packets in the absence and presence of the cochannel interference.

I. Introduction

Machine type communications (MTC) enable pervasive connectivity among MTC devices (MTCDs), facilitating the development of various applications and services such as smart grid, on-body sensors, maritime monitoring, etc. [1], [2]. Among the emerging network architectures for MTC, cellular-based architecture has been considered more efficient and promising due to the support of well-developed and mature standards, powerful infrastructures, ubiquitous coverage, and high reliability [3]. However, massive concurrent accesses of MTCDs will result in network congestion and system overload [4]. To cope with this problem, the clustering technique has been introduced in cellular networks, where only cluster heads (CHs) need to access the network, dramatically reducing the number of access attempts [5].