Abstract
Clustering in wireless sensor networks has been one of the most effective mechanisms for addressing the issues of network lifetime, scalability and bandwidth reusability. In this paper, application of a relatively new meta-heuristic called as quantum inspired genetic algorithm has been proposed for dealing with the problem of multi-hop energy balanced unequal clustering and prolonging the network lifetime. Quantum inspired genetic algorithm conflates the concepts of evolutionary computation with the principles of quantum computing. The quantum computing principles impart huge parallel processing capabilities to the genetic algorithm due to which these algorithms provide better quality solutions in lesser amount of time. Quantum inspired algorithms are capable of providing competitive solutions even with a very small population size which results in reduced computational cost as population size is a factor in complexity calculation for evolutionary and swarm algorithms. The effectiveness of proposed approach has been evaluated by comparing it with traditional genetic algorithm based clustering for wireless sensor networks. Simulation results clearly indicate that quantum inspired genetic algorithm is capable of performing clustering in more efficient way and increasing the network lifetime as compared to traditional genetic algorithm.