Chain based hierarchical routing protocol for wireless sensor networks

Abstract

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are very crucial network system in present day for getting information from an unattendant environment. The small tiny sensor nodes can sense environment's condition (temperature, pressure, humidity etc.) and send data to a particular location through wireless sensor networks. For collecting data from such an environment through these sensor nodes, there are different existing approaches in WSNs. LEACH[1] is one of them energy efficient cluster based routing protocol. In this paper we try to improve LEACH protocol by introducing a chain among the sensor nodes in each and every cluster as discussed in PEGASIS[2] protocol. The cluster heads get accumulated data or information from this chain and send it to its nearest base station (BS). Due to limited resources (energy, storage capacity, computing power etc) the lifetime of the sensor nodes are very restricted. LEACH protocol saves energy of the total network by using randomization for distributing the energy load among the sensor nodes and thus it enhances the lifespan of the network. But in the modified protocol, each sensor nodes except the cluster head sends sensed data to its nearest node, not to the cluster head like LEACH. As a result each node can preserve some energy and thus enhancing life span of the system. Moreover, since each node sends data to its nearest node, the modified approach can complete every round more quickly. © 2010 Springer-Verlag.