Multihop hierarchical routing protocol for large wireless sensor networks under the non-ideal connectivity conditions

The hierarchical routing protocols are considered as a suitable and energy efficient for wireless sensor networks applications that demand frequent and periodic data gathering. Many routing protocols for two-layer (single-hop), tree-layer (dual-hop) and multiple-layer (multi-hop) architectures are developed based on the hierarchical LEACH protocol. In this paper we propose a novel concept for the energy efficient multi-hop routing, with a simple procedure that assigns hierarchical levels to sensor nodes and sets necessary data for routing while the cluster head election process as in LEACH is used. Here proposed multi-hop protocol possess inherent resilience to packet loss due to the non-ideal network connectivity. Performance analysis under ideal and nonideal connectivity conditions showed that here proposed multihop routing protocol outperforms LEACH-based single-hop and dual-hop protocols that were previously proposed with the goal of performance improvement in a case of non-ideal connectivity.