Abstract
The main constraint that affects the practical design of Wireless Sensor Networks (W SNs) is the network energy as network nodes has limited resources capabilities. Low Energy Adaptive Clustering Hierarchy (LEACH) routing protocol is one of the popular clustering based algorithms that optimize energy consumption of WSN. The selection of Cluster Heads (CHs) in each round is determined depending on a random number generated by each node, which compared to a threshold value. The generated random number is the main factor in CH selection process. Normally, the random number is varied each time when calling the random number generator. The effect of the generated random numbers is neutralized during this work to get real effect of the suggested enhancements.
The proposed enhancement on the conventional LEACH, in this work is, focused on the proper choice of network CH in each round, which accomplished by inserting a factor to the conventional threshold equation. The inserted factor implies remaining or consumed energy of each node to make the selection of CH depends on the nodes energy status information. The conventional LEACH and the proposed modification are practically implemented using Sun SPOT sensor nodes.
Some previous work use approximated energy model, during simulation studies, of WSN but neglect more factors that consume a lot of energy in practical circuits. This work also, proposes a real model for the energy consumption sources that used in the simulation work to obtain the nearest model to the practical WSN.
The simulation results for both the conventional LEACH and the proposed enhanced protocol are done using MA TLAB. Comparison of results between the performance of proposed protocol and that of LEACH using the simulation and practical work show the extent of performance enhancement by using the proposed protocol.