An Energy-Efficient Hierarchical Routing for Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract: The popularity of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) has increased tremendously in recent time due to growth in MicroElectro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS) & wireless communication technology. The main purpose of such networks is to collect information from the environments and deliver the same to the applications to determine characteristics of the environment or detect an event. As sensor nodes depend on batteries, they have limited amount of energy. One of the major issues in wireless sensor networks is to develop an energy-efficient routing protocol which has a significant impact on the overall lifetime of the sensor network. Many energy efficient routing protocols have been proposed to solve this problem and increase the lifetime of the network. This paper proposes a clustering technique which is based on LEACH protocol. In this, clusters are formed based on their geographical location & cluster heads are selected on the basis of highest residual energy within the cluster as well as minimum distance to the base station from the cluster heads. The network lifetime for various levels of hierarchical routing techniques is compared. There are two outcomes from the implemented protocol. These are prolonged network lifetime & increased mean residual energy with the increase in number of clusters in the wireless sensor network.