RF/FSO and LEACH wireless sensor networks: A case study comparing network performance

Power consumption is an important design criterion in the design of wireless sensor networks. Hybrid radio frequency/free space optical wireless sensor networks (RF/FSO WSN) have been proposed to reduce the energy consumption of traditional RF-based sensor networks. This paper compares the performance of such a hybrid sensor network against the well-known RF-based low energy adapting clustering hierarchy (LEACH) WSN proposed in the literature. Network performance is studied in terms of network lifetime and average network area coverage. Simulations show that despite not employing data aggregation, the RF/FSO WSN has a longer lifetime and larger average network coverage when compared to the LEACH WSN.