摘要:The most critical issue is how to increase network lifetime and scalability and balance load on sensor nodes in the Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs). This study presented a new method for data gathering that maximizes lifetime for distributed sensor networks. It involves the following parts. First, nodes organize themselves into several static clusters by a given clustering algorithm. Second, clusters are formed only once but the role of cluster head is optimally scheduled among the cluster members according the gradient and residual energy. A single cluster head is in active state and non cluster head is in sleep or listen state with different sleep period. Third, after cluster-heads are selected, they form a backbone network to periodically collect, aggregate and forward data to the base station. Comparing with non-sleep and synchronous sleep by the MATLAB, significant lifetime extension is obtained with the use of this method.