U-LEACH: A novel routing protocol for heterogeneous Wireless Sensor Networks

A Wireless Sensor Network comprises of a number of energy-constraint sensor nodes deployed in the area of interest. In our paper, we have proposed a new hierarchical clustering based routing protocol for the heterogeneous wireless sensor networks. The proposed protocol named as Universal - Low Energy Adaptive Cluster Hierarchy (U-LEACH) is an energy efficient protocol showing a significant reduction in the energy consumption by the sensor nodes. Unlike LEACH, in U-LEACH, the selection of Cluster-Head depends on the initial and the residual energy of the nodes. In a particular cluster, the transfer of information between the nodes takes place by forming a chain, starting from the farthest node from the base station. Data aggregation has also been implemented successfully to slam down the energy-consumption. Simulations results show substantial improvement of the U-LEACH over its nemesis protocols.