An Improved LEACH Protocol Based on Location and Residual Energy for Wireless Sensor Networks

Normally, in the classical Low Energy Adaptive Clustering Hierarchy protocol (LEACH), the choice of cluster heads does not rely on the location of node and the residual energy of node. Under the circumstances, the cluster head nodes often die prematurely, resulting in a short lifetime of the whole network. Based on traditional LEACH protocols, this paper gave a new rule of cluster formation by K-means clustering method. When ordinary nodes are upgraded to cluster head nodes, the location and residual energy of nodes are comprehensive considered to improve the election method of cluster head. At the same time, the ordinary node closing to the sink node is marked as a special node, and it jumps out of the cluster structure to transmit data directly to the sink node. Thus, the LEACH-CS (Cluster Selection) algorithm was proposed. Then, we derived the formula of total energy consumption, calculated the optimal value of the number of cluster centers in the lowest energy consumption and the selection of special node distance by mathematical deduction. Finally, the effectiveness of the method was verified by simulations. The simulation results demonstrate that compared with the traditional LEACH protocol and LEACH-C protocol, the proposed algorithm LEACH-CS can effectively reduce the total energy consumption of the network and greatly prolong the network lifetime.