Performance Analysis of Hierarchical Routing Protocol (LEACH) for Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract

In the wireless sensor networks (WSNs), the sensor nodes are usually scattered in a sensor field - an area in which the sensor nodes are deployed. Sensor nodes in these networks coordinate to produce high-quality information and each of these scattered sensor nodes has the capability to collect and route data back to the base station, which may be fixed or mobile. In WSNs, conservation of energy, which is directly related to network lifetime, is considered relatively more important than the performance of the network in terms of reliability of data sent. The cluster based routing algorithms are more energy efficient as compared to the flat routing algorithms. This paper is based on the analysis of Low Energy Adaptive Clustering Hierarchy (LEACH), a cluster based routing protocol. The LEACH protocol was simulated by varying the number of clusters to observe the effect on sensor network performance in terms of network lifetime, energy dissipation and amount of data reaching at base station.