Research On Cluster-based Routing Protocol For Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless sensor networks are composed of large numbers of sensor nodes, which are deployed in the monitoring area. These sensor nodes work together to perceive and process the various signals of the monitoring area, in order to obtain the information of the objective world. In recent years, this technology is widely used in many fields such as military security, industrial and agricultural control, nature science exploration, smart home, health care, logistics and traffic management and so on.As the sensor nodes is characterized by small volume and low power consumption, the battery power they carry is very limited. What’s more, the deployment environment is quite complicated and it is difficult to replace the batteries of the sensor nodes, so how to use energy efficiently and maximize the network lifetime become the chief goal of the design of a wireless sensor network. Routing protocol is the basis of the operation of the wireless sensor networks, which has a great influence on the sensor networks, so the quality of the routing protocol directly determines the performance of the wireless sensor networks.In order to design a high efficient energy saving routing protocol, the thesis makes a detailed description and analysis of the LEACH cluster-based routing protocol. By modifying the thresholds of the routing protocol algorithm, the thesis proposes an improved cluster-based routing protocol algorithm(LEACH-I) in consideration of the energy of the current nodes, the average and the maximum energy of the cluster nodes. The algorithm limits the number of members of each cluster and forms the first cluster head during all the cluster heads. What’s more, the algorithm balances the load of the network in multi-hop manner. The comparison of performance of the LEACH and LEACH-I protocol is given by using NS2 software. The simulation results show that the improved algorithm reduces energy consumption, and the lifetime of the network is extended, thus ensuring the load balancing of the system.