Volume 6 • Issue 2 • PP: 12–16 • 2026
Trust-Aware Cluster-Head Selection in IoT Wireless Sensor Networks via Interval-Neutrosophic Information Fusion
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© 2026 The Author(s). Published by ASPG. This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).
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Cluster-based routing extends the lifetime of an Internet-of-Things wireless sensor network (WSN), but the quality of a cluster head (CH) depends on several mutually uncertain factors—residual energy, link quality, centrality and behavioural trust—each measured imperfectly and reported as a range rather than a point. We model each candidate node with an interval-neutrosophic set (INS), so every factor carries an interval of truth, indeterminacy and falsity, and we fuse the factors with an interval-neutrosophic weighted aggregation operator into a single suitability score. Cluster heads are then elected by a possibility-degree ranking of the fused interval scores, subject to a minimum-trust guard. Simulation of a 200-node network shows that interval-neutrosophic CH selection extends first-node-death time by 18–24% over a standard energy-and-distance heuristic and cuts the share of misbehaving nodes elected as heads from 14.7% to 1.3%. The method degrades gracefully as measurement indeterminacy grows and adds only modest per-round overhead.
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