STUDY OF LEACH PROTOCOL FOR WIRELESS SENSOR NETWORKS

Abstract

Wireless sensor networks are presenting as an essential need for mankind. It composed from a large number of sensor node with the ability to sense and process data in the physical world in a appropriate manner. In this work, cluster based routing in wireless sensor networks is studied specifically. The most prominent wireless sensor network’s routing protocol “LEACH” as modified LEACH (MODLEACH) by introducing efficient cluster head replacement scheme and dual transmitting power levels. The modified LEACH, in respect with the LEACH out performs it using metrics of cluster head formation, through put and network life. Afterwards, hard and soft thresholds are implemented on modified LEACH (MODLEACH) that boasts the performance. A clustering based routing algorithm known as Low-Energy Adaptive Clustering Hierarchy (LEACH). It was proposed as a solution for low power consumption. In this work, cluster based routing in wireless sensor networks is studied precisely. LEACH algorithm shows some drawbacks that want an improvement to overcome it as to improve the performance. Then, the modified LEACH algorithm was proposed where the improvement was done in cluster head selection based on LEACH. In cluster head selection, modified LEACH taking into account the residual energy of each node for calculation of the threshold value for next round. Meanwhile in LEACH, the cluster head selection was based on distributed algorithm. Both of these protocols was implemented in network simulator to compare the performance. This study shows that there were a better performance achieved by modified LEACH depends on the results obtained.

Index Terms: LEACH, Wireless, Sensor, Networks, Routing, Protocol, MODLEACH, WSN’s, Cluster, Head and Threshold.