Int. J. Communication Networks and Distributed Systems, Vol. 17, No. 4, 2016 433 Copyright © 2016 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd. A multi-criterion fuzzy logic intra-cluster and inter-cluster-based stable cluster head election approach in large scale WSN Virender Ranga* and Mayank Dave Department of Computer Engineering, National Institute of Technology, Kurukshetra, Haryana, India Email: virendersinghmtech@gmail.com Email: m.dave@ieee.org *Corresponding author Anil Kumar Verma Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Thapar University, Patiala, Punjab, India Email: akverma@thapar.edu Abstract: Extending the lifetime of wireless sensor networks (WSNs) is a major concern in recent years. The main problem seems in the recent proposed approaches is that these use direct communication among nodes with the rotation of cluster heads (CHs) periodically to distribute energy consumption among various cluster heads (CHs). Energy saving mechanisms based only on metrics related to nodes’ residual power cannot be directly applied to find stable CHs. The reason is that a sensor node or a CH having more residual power is willing to accept all requests, because it has enough residual battery power, therefore, much traffic will be injected to that node. In that case, a sharp decay of node’s backup battery power. In this research paper, a multi-criterion fuzzy logic intra-cluster and inter-cluster based multi-hop routing protocol is proposed. The simulation results confirm that our proposed approach is more efficient than state-of-the-art approaches. Keywords: node energy decay rate; expected node stability; residual power; fuzzy logic system. Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Ranga, V., Dave, M. and Verma, A.K. (2016) ‘A multi-criterion fuzzy logic intra-cluster and inter-cluster-based stable cluster head election approach in large scale WSN’, Int. J. Communication Networks and Distributed Systems, Vol. 17, No. 4, pp.433–449. Biographical notes: Virender Ranga received his PhD degree in Computer Engineering from National Institute of Technology, Kurukshetra in 2016. Currently, he is an Assistant Professor in the Computer Engineering Department, NIT Kurukshetra Haryana, India with more than 15 years of experience in academic and administrative affairs in the institute. He has published more than 50 research papers in various international/national referred journals and conferences like IEEE, Elsevier, Springer, T&F and ASP.