Spanning tree based reliable data transmission in LEACH

Abstract

Wireless Sensor Networks are currently finding applications in various upcoming fields such as health care monitoring, environment monitoring, vehicular ad-hoc networks, and many more, even though they have limited power, computational and communication capabilities. Clustering protocols are crucial in wireless sensor networks as they optimize energy consumption. LEACH is a clustering protocol used for minimal consumption of energy. In this paper, we have proposed a scheme to enhance reliability in LEACH by making use of spanning trees generated at base station to achieve multipath and multi-hop data transmission. The assigned paths make use of only cluster heads. This scheme was validated through simulation exercises which highlight the effect of employing spanning trees on the average end to end delay in data transmission and total energy consumed by cluster heads. © 2012 ICST Institute for Computer Science, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering.