Energy-efficient communication protocols for wireless microsensor networks

Abstract

Wireless distributed microsensor systems will enable the reliable monitoring of a variety of environments for both civil and military applications. In this paper, we look at communication protocols, which can have significant im-pact on the overall energy dissipation of these networks. Based on our findings that the conventional protocols of direct transmission, minimum-transmission-energy, multi-hop routing, and static clustering may not be optimal for sensor networks, we propose LEACH (Low-Energy Adap-tive Clustering Hierarchy), a clustering-based protocol that utilizes randomized rotation of local cluster base stations (cluster-heads) to evenly distribute the energy load among the sensors in the network. LEACH uses localized coordi-nation to enable scalability and robustness for dynamic net-works, and incorporates data fusion into the routing proto-col to reduce the amount of information that must be trans-mitted to the base station. Simulations show that LEACH can achieve as much as a factor of 8 reduction in energy dissipation compared with conventional routing protocols. In addition, LEACH is able to distribute energy dissipation evenly throughout the sensors, doubling the useful system lifetime for the networks we simulated. 1.