Using Maximum Energy Cluster Head for Routing in Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract

In recent years, there has been a growing interest in wireless sensor networks. One of the major issues in wireless sensor network is developing an energy-efficient routing protocol. Since the sensor nodes have limited available power, energy conservation is a critical issue in wireless sensor networks for node availability and network life. Most of the existing routing protocols for sensor networks don't turn off the radio frequency completely, which will increase the energy consumption. LEACH (Low-Energy Adaptive Clustering Hierarchy) is a clustering-based protocol that non-cluster-head nodes will turn off their RF completely until their pre-allocated time slot. However, LEACH has a drawback that the cluster is not evenly distributed due to its randomized rotation of local cluster-head. In this paper, we propose a MECH (Maximum Energy Cluster Head) routing protocol. It has self-configuration and hierarchical tree routing properties. MECH improves LEACH in several aspects. MECH constructs cluster based on radio range and the number of the cluster members. The members in a cluster in the networks are distributed more equally through our cluster constructing. We also propose a hierarchical tree method that reduces the distances of routing path from cluster-heads to the base station. Simulation results show that MECH outperforms LEACH in several respects.