Analyzing cluster-head selection mechanisms and improving the LEACH

Water-regime monitoring system is a wireless-sensor-network (WSN) based real-time system. It often collects, transmits, analyzes and processes water regime parameters in large areas. Since the cluster-head selection mechanism affects directly on the energy consumption and network lifetime, both the cluster selection mechanism and the energy saving strategy play an important role on the design of network routing protocols. Current routing algorithms usually have two shortages: unbalanced energy loads and short network lifetime. They often could not be used directly in water regime monitoring systems. In this paper, based on the idea of cluster-head expected frequency appraisal, a LEACH-HEFA (LEACH-Head Expected Frequency Appraisal) algorithm was proposed for improving the performances. Simulation results clearly show that LEACH-HEFA algorithm can balance the energy consumption of nodes in the WSN, rationalize the clustering process and prolong the network lifetime effectively. It indicates that this proposed algorithm is suitable to water regime monitoring systems.