Energy Efficient Routing in Wireless Sensor Networks: A Comparative Study on LEACH Protocol and its Successors

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are among the most important fields of Wireless Computing. Yet, the network lifetime of WSNs is very limited because the energy reserves of their wireless nodes are extremely restricted. Thus, the greatest challenge for deploying WSNs is the minimization of energy consumption. In a WSN the greatest part of energy consumption takes place during data routing. That is why the most effective way to reduce energy consumption in WSNs is to perform energy efficient routing. This work focuses on LEACH (Low Energy Adaptive Clustering Hierarchy), which is one of the pioneer protocols of this kind, along with the main successors of LEACH. A theoretical comparison of these protocols, based on various metrics, using either single hop communication or multi hop communication is made. Also, three of these protocols are compared with LEACH through simulation tests performed. Finally, corresponding concluding remarks are drawn.