Enhancement of Cluster-based Routing Protocol with Parameters Consideration in Wireless Sensor Network

A wireless sensor network (WSN) consists of large number of battery operated sensor nodes which are generally deployed in different environments. These sensor nodes have limited energy to sense, process and transmit information. Therefore, there is a need to design an energy efficient routing protocol to extend the lifetime of a WSN. Low Energy Adaptive Clustering Hierarchy (LEACH) protocols are considered to optimize the energy consumption. In this paper, a cluster based routing protocol called Enhancement of Cluster-based Routing Protocol with Parameter Consideration (ECRP-PC) is proposed, in which an assistant Cluster Head called Vice Cluster Head (VCH) is introduced in addition to Cluster Head (CH). In a cluster, the node with the highest residual energy among all nodes is selected as the CH, and the node with second highest residual energy is selected by the CH as the VCH when the cluster head distance is longer than the specified distance. VCH will serve as a backup node of the CH. The selected VCH will be in a sleep mode as long as the energy of CH is above a threshold, and it will become active when the energy of CH is below a threshold. According to the results, the proposed ECRP-PC protocol is able to increase the average lifetime of nodes up to 56% compared to the original LEACH