Balanced energy consumption and cluster-based routing protocol

In wireless sensor network (WSN), the routing protocol is one of the most important aspects. LEACH (Low Energy Adaptive clustering Hierarchy) is the first routing protocol based on cluster structure. Though there are a lot of improvements on LEACH protocol at present, cluster heads still play the most important role in these routing protocols. Cluster heads are responsible for gathering information, transmitting packets and aggregating data. A mass of work processed by cluster head will make it consume too much energy. Then the lifetime of WSN will be shortened. Thus, in this paper we propose an improvement on LEACH protocol in order to monitor large-scale environment longer and stably. Gateways will construct a multi-hops path to transmit packet, Cluster heads are just responsible for gathering and aggregating data from cluster members. Thus, the task of transmitting packet is separated from cluster head. As the experiment results shown, the improved protocol can balance energy consumption and extend the lifetime of the network.