Performance Analysis of Clustering Based Routing Protocols In Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) constitutes of spatially deployed independent nodes with attached sensors to sense the surrounding physical conditions such as humidity, pressure, temperature etc. These nodes with connected sensors eventually transmit the collected data to the sink (base station) and in this process of transmission, energy efficiency and network lifetime are major concerns. Accordingly, clustering based routing algorithms (protocols) have been designed in which the network of the sensor nodes is broken into groups and the sensors existing in that cluster group transfer the information to the cluster heads present in their respective clusters. These cluster heads conclusively channel the information to the base station. In this evaluation, various routing protocols using clustering techniques namely Homogeneous LEACH, Heterogeneous LEACH, Unequal Clustering Mechanism (UCM) based LEACH, SEP, Z-SEP, DEEC, MSE, modified DEEC, Enhanced SEP and Threshold DEEC have been simulated, investigated and compared based on multiple parameters like network lifetime, throughput, period of stability and average energy of the network.