The model of energy cost in a wireless sensor network （WSN）environment is built, and the energy awareness and the wireless interference mainly due to different path loss models are studied. A special case of a clustering scheme, a twodimensional grid clustering mechanism, is adopted. Clusterheads are rotated evenly among all sensor nodes in an efficient and decentralized manner, based on the residual energy in the battery and the random backoff time. In addition to transmitting and receiving packets within the sensors＇ electrical and amplification circuits, extra energy is needed in the retransmission of packets due to packet collisions caused by severe interference. By analysis and mathematical derivation, which are based on planar geometry, it is shown that the total energy consumed in the network is directly related to the gridstructure in the proposed grid based clustering mechanism. The transmission range is determined by cluster size, and the path loss exponent is determined by nodal separation. The summation of overall interference is caused by all the sensors that are transmitting concurrently. By analysis and simulation, an optimal grid structure with the corresponding grid size is presented, which balances between maximizing energy conservation and minimizing overall interference in wireless sensor networks.
