ML-LEACH: Multi-Level LEACH for uniformly distributed clusters and low energy consumption

Abstract

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) are generally battery-powered devices. As energy consumption increases exponentially with communication distance, multi-hop routing is very advantageous to save energy and prolong network lifetime. For these reasons, we propose, in this paper, ML-LEACH (Multi-Level clustering for Low Energy Adaptive Clustering Hierarchy) protocol that partitions uniformly a large-scale network into different layers. The election of cluster heads is performed in each layer to keep coverage of the whole monitored network area. Cluster heads in each layer collaborate with the adjacent upper layer to transmit sensor's data to the base station. Accordingly, we build a multi-level hierarchy to reduce the communication distance between sensor nodes and better distribute the energy load among them especially when the density of network is higher. Simulation results show that the proposed ML-Leach protocol achieves significant improvements in term of energy consumption, coverage and connectivity compared to other approaches.