Abstract: A wireless sensor network is generally defined under a standard architecture called clustering architecture. According to this architecture, the complete network is divided in small segments called clusters. Each cluster is defined with a cluster head. The cluster head is responsible to manage all the communication within the cluster. Each node defined in the cluster, communicate with cluster head and then the information from the cluster head is transferred to the base station in direction of multi hop path. The life of the network depends on the cluster head. The effective clustering decides the actual life of the network. In this work, we have defined a solution to improve the network life by presenting an effective clustering approach. In WSN, Network lifetime is one of the major concerned area. In this work, modification in existing V-Leach protocol is done to improve the network life. The cluster head selection is done on the basis of energy and distance parameters. At the same time, the Vice Cluster Head is also selected along with Cluster Head Selection. As the cluster head dies, it is replaced by Vice Cluster Head and a new Vice Cluster Head is selected. The proposed approach tries to keep the Cluster Heads alive for the maximum time, because of this the lifetime of network maximizes and the communication over the network will be maximized and hence, improved.

Keywords: Wireless sensor networks, sensor nodes, routing protocol, cluster head, energy efficiency, lifetime, clustering, multihop, adhoc Networks.