B.K. Panigrahi et al. (Eds.): SEMCCO 2011, Part II, LNCS 7077, pp. 140–147, 2011. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2011 Energy Efficient Cluster Formation in Wireless Sensor Networks Using Cuckoo Search Manian Dhivya 1 , Murugesan Sundarambal², and J. Oswald Vincent 3 1 Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Anna University of Technology, Coimbatore, TamilNadu-641047 saidhivya1@gmail.com 2 Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Coimbatore Institute of Technology, Coimbatore, TamilNadu-641014 mseeecit@yahoo.co.in 3 SHV Energy Private Limited, T.Nagar, Chennai, TamilNadu-600017 oswaldrocks@gmail.com Abstract. Wireless Sensor Networks consist of wide range of applications to be discerned and researched nowadays. The foremost restraint of these Networks is to reduce energy consumption and to prolong the lifetime of the network. In this paper a meta-heuristic optimization technique, Cuckoo Search is used to aggregate data in the Sensor Network. In the proposed technique, the least energy nodes are formed as subordinate chains (or) clusters for sensing the data and high energy nodes as Cluster Head for communicating to the base station. The Cuckoo search is proposed to get enhanced network performance incorpo- rating balanced energy dissipation and results in the formation of optimum number of clusters and minimal energy consumption. The feasibility of the scheme is manifested by the Simulation results on comparison with the tradi- tional methods. Keywords: Wireless Sensor Networks, Clustering, Cuckoo Search, energy efficiency, Network Lifetime. 1 Introduction Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are distributed systems, limited in power, memory and computational capacities. The design often employs approaches such as energy- aware techniques, in-network processing, multihop communication and density con- trol techniques to extend the network lifetime. While traditional networks aim to achieve high Quality of Service (QoS) provisions; Sensor Network protocols must focus primarily on power conservation [1]. Hence minimization and conservation of energy is a critical and significant issue in the design of Wireless Sensor Networks. Clustering and classification techniques afford a new dimension to the Sensor Network paradigm. The cluster based routing techniques are viable for a wide variety