A Comprehensive Analysis of Energy Dissipation in LEACH Protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are deployed over a specific area to monitor a range of environmental and physical phenomena. WSNs are known by their limitation in term of energy, memory, and computing capability. Therefore, these sensors need effective wireless communication protocols in terms of energy efficiency, ease of deployment, and low latency. LEACH is the principle routing algorithm adopted today for WSN data transmission. It is the origin of a variety of self-organizing clustering-based routing protocol. Data communication is the main source of energy losses beside but to a lesser extent data processing. The actual research is a step by step follow of LEACH focusing into the energy dissipation in various stages. The simulation of the protocol is accomplished through a MATLAB implementation to clarify the dissipation process. Nodes die after the residual energy has reached a minimum allowed threshold necessary for sensor functionality as part of the WSN. LEACH shows good performances but requires improvement in the cluster head selection stage by the use optimization techniques.