A Low-Energy Adaptive Clustering Routing Protocol of Wireless Sensor Networks

Energy efficiency is one of the most important issues of wireless sensor networks (WSN). The routing technology of the network layer is critical in reduce the energy consumption in WSN. Nevertheless, the reliability and data aggression also should be analyzed. To solve these issues, an energy effective routing protocol based on low-energy adaptive clustering hierarchy algorithm is proposed to meet those key Qos requirements. The proposed protocol focuses on some defects of the traditional LEACH, and improves the energy efficiency and other QoS parameters by excluding the node with improper geographic location to be the cluster heads. In the protocol, the optimum measuring range of head nodes is designed to be a criterion of cluster head selection, and every cluster heads can be selected according to the node density threshold in the measuring area, which is confirmed by the node distribution situation and communication requirement. With the simulations, the proposed protocol is evaluated in comparison with the traditional LEACH algorithm. The performance of the proposed protocol is verified to not only reduce the energy consumption but also guarantees the communication quality especially in the uneven distribution situation.