YA-LEACH: Yet another LEACH for wireless sensor networks

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) is an ever growing field owing to their extensive variety of applications. WSN have limited battery energy, consequently, an energy efficient routing protocol is of major concern. LEACH (Low Energy Adaptive Clustering Hierarchy) is one of the fundamental clustering protocols in WSN that provides high energy efficiency. Many protocols have been derived from LEACH which mostly address a single inherent challenge. Instead of focusing on a single parameter, combining independent techniques can compound gains in energy efficiency. This paper proposes Yet Another LEACH (YA-LEACH) which uses centralised cluster formation to ensure optimal clusters and allow Cluster Heads (CH) to extend operation into multiple rounds to achieve energy savings. Also, the proposed protocol will have an alternative (vice) CH that takes over when CH residual energy reaches a critically low level. The extended protocol was simulated on NS2 with results showing an improvement in network lifetime and overall data throughput.