A Survey on LEACH-Based Energy Aware Protocols for Wireless Sensor Networks

Due to the advances in wireless communications and electronics technology, Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are used in many applications such as civil and military application. A WSN is composed on many nodes each of which is basically equipped with a sensing device to collect data from the environment, a processing unit to do some operations on data, a transceiver to send and receive collected, and an energy source to provide the required energy to operate (usually a battery). In most applications sensor nodes are randomly deployed in the field. Therefore, battery replacement or charging is considered not practical. As a result, routing protocols must be energy-efficient to prolong the network lifetime. Researchers have been working to develop routing techniques that enhances the WSN lifetime among which is the hierarchical routing. In this paper, we present a recent survey of hierarchical routing protocols which are based on LEACH protocol. Specifically, we will show the network life time and energy consumption for each protocol. Furthermore, a comparison of these protocols in terms of advantages (improvements over LEACH), disadvantages, assumptions, and the Cluster Head selection criteria are provided. 1