A Simulation Model for Hierarchical Routing Protocols in Wireless Sensor Networks

One of the critical issues in wireless sensor network is power saving scheme as network should be considered to operate more efficiently. The sensor nodes are usually operated by a finite number of batteries and it should have a certain lifetime for gathering, processing, and transmitting information. Since some sensor nodes may fail due to lack of power, this consideration has led to give more interest about routing protocols. Depending on the network structure, a sensor network can be hierarchical or cluster-based hierarchical model, where the nodes will play different roles in the networks. We present three different types of routing protocols: LEACH, PEGASIS, and VGA, several simulations are conducted to analyze the performance of these protocols including the power consumption and overall network performance. On the average, VGA has the worst power consumption when the sensing range is limited, while VGA is the best when the sensing range is increased