An Enhanced LEACH Routing Algorithm for Energy Conservation in A Wireless Sensor Network

It has been well established that the lifetime of a Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) depends on the energy of the sensor nodes which is limited by the battery capacity of the nodes. This challenge has led to research efforts towards developing a more efficient energy based routing algorithms and architectures. One of such popular algorithm is the Low-Energy Adaptive Clustering Hierarchy (LEACH). The LEACH approach adopts randomized rotation of local base stations (or cluster-heads (CH)) to evenly distribute energy load amongst the sensors in the network. A variant of LEACH known as Vice-LEACH (V-LEACH) introduces the concept of a vice-CH that takes over the role of the main CH in the event of CH death. Random selection of cluster- head node in both LEACH and V-LEACH ignore node's residual energy and the optimal number and distribution of cluster head is not ensured in all rounds. This work presents an enhanced cluster-based routing algorithm which took into consideration the residual energy of nodes in the network while maintaining the optimal number of CHs throughout the network lifetime. A sensor network was developed on OPNET Modeler software tool and simulation tests were performed to evaluate the performance of the enhanced routing algorithm on the network. Simulation results showed that this enhanced routing algorithm distributed network energy consumption across the network nodes hence significantly improving the lifetime of the sensor network.