Wireless Sensor Networks Energy Efficient Cluster Routing Algorithm

Motivated by the advancement in sensor, embedded computing, networking and wireless communication technologies, wireless sensor networks (WSN) is now regarded as a promising technology for pervasive information acquiring and processing. Since WSN could be deployed in diverse applications, such as military affairs, medical care, emergencies, and so on, it becomes a boosting research topic in modern wireless networking technology. Due to the limited power supply characteristics of individual sensor node, it is extensively desirable to find out ways to maximize the life time of WSN. Consequently, energy-efficient routing protocol has become a hotspot in both academic research and industrial practices.This paper firstly summarizes the factors which dominate the energy-consumption characteristics of routing protocol for WSN. Some criteria are then presented to evaluate the performance of a given routing protocol. Secondly, after introducing several mainstream routing protocols, the Low-energy Adaptive Clustering Hierarchy (LEACH) will be addressed to elucidate its advantages and disadvantages. Some proposals are also discussed to improve the LEACH routing protocol. At the same time a universal and scalable LEACH protocol's simulation platform is established using OPNET.Based on the study of LEACH, in this paper, we propose a new clustering routing algorithm-Radius Adaptive Clustering Multi-hop Routing Algorithm(RACMH). It combine radius adaptive clustering technology and multi-hop communication manner, nodes independently becomes either cluster heads or cluster members according to local communication, the covered regions of cluster are limited in a certain radius, all cluster heads build a routing tree according to weight message and transport datas to base station in multi-hop communication manner. Simulation results show that 1) The number of the cluster head that RACMH forms is unrelated with initial cluster head probability; 2) With the increase the cluster radius R, the number of the cluster head that RACMH eventually forms is decreasing; 3) Compared with LEACH, the FND,HND,LND of RACMH distinctly improve 43.8%,100.5% and 70.4%, this show that RACMH is much better than LEACH in saving network energy dissipation, prolonging network lifetime and balancing networking load; 4) When the distance of the base station is increasing, network lifetime of RACMH changes slower than LEACH's, this show that RACMH is more suitable for large network; 5) When the network area is increasing, the performance of RACMH is beginning to degenerate, but the whole performance is still better than LEACH.