Cluster based Routing Protocol Optimization for Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract

In the wireless sensor networks (WSNs), the sensor nodes (called motes) are usually scattered in a sensor field - an area in which the sensor nodes are deployed. These motes are small in size and have limited processing power, memory and battery life. The motes in these networks are coordinate to produce high-quality information and each of these scattered motes has the capabilities to collect and route data back to the base stations, which are fixed or mobile. In WSNs, conservation of energy, which is directly related to network lifetime, is considered relatively more important so use of energy efficient routing algorithms is one of the ways to reduce the energy conser- vation. In general, routing algorithms in WSNs can be divided into at, hierarchical and location-based routing. In at, all nodes are assigned equal roles. In hierarchi- cal, however, nodes will play different roles in the network. While in location-based routing, sensor nodes are addressed by means of their locations. The main objective of this major project is to optimize the Low-Energy Adaptive Clustering Hierarchy (LEACH) protocol. There are two reasons behind the hier- archical routing being explored. One, the sensor networks are dense and a lot of redundancy is involved in communication. Second, in order to increase the scalability of the sensor network keeping in mind the security aspects of communication. Cluster based routing holds great promise for many-to-one and one-to-many communication paradigms that are prevalent in sensor networks. In this major project, the work has been carried out is implementation of at based Flooding and Gossiping routing protocols using TinyOS Simulator (TOSSIM), imple- mentation of LEACH routing protocol using NS-2 simulator and finally some mod- i_cations in LEACH routing protocol in order to improve the performance of the LEACH protocol. The results were then analyzed based on the suggested evaluation metrics in order to verify their suitability for use in wireless sensor networks.