AN ENERGY EFFICIENT ROUTING FOR WIRELESS SENSOR NETWORKS BASED ON A NOVEL CLUSTER HEAD ELECTION

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) consist of a limited capability nodes called sensors. These sensors may be in size of grain of dust in some applications so it has very limited resources (memory, energy, computational capabilities, transmission, range...ect). Most of the WSN literature focuses on the efficient use of the network resources to increase the network life time as well as the system robustness. Unlike traditional networks, where the focus is on maximizing channel throughput or minimizing node deployment and enhancing the quality of service. This paper presents a new cluster head election algorithm aims to prolong the stable region of the network as well as the system life time by using the network energy efficiently. The presented technique is called the heterogeneity aware LEACH (HALEACH). It was compared to the Direct transmission (DT), the homogeneous LEACH, the heterogeneity unaware LEACH and the Fair protocol. The results show that HALEACH outperforms the other compared techniques.