Reduction of Single Clusters in LEACH Protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks

Clustering in wireless sensor networks (WSN) is an efficient way to structure and organize the network. The cluster-head (CH) forms dominant set in the network which is responsible for the creation of clusters, maintenance of the topology and data aggregation. LEACH (Low Energy Adaptive Clustering Hierarchy) is one of the most prominent hierarchical routing protocols used in Wireless Sensors Networks (WSN). Many protocols have been proposed in the literature to improve LEACH protocol. The cluster formation in LEACH is probabilistic, therefore there is heterogeneous size of cluster in the network and sometimes singleton, i.e. cluster with only one node could appear. These singletons directly send information to the base station (BS). Consequently they consume more energy due to the distance to the base station. This paper proposes a hierarchical routing protocol based on LEACH called LEACH-based SNCR that reduces singletons and balances the energy consumption between sensors. Simulations results show that LEACH-based SNCR increases the network lifetime compared to LEACH.