A new algorithm for cluster head selection in LEACH protocol for wireless sensor networks

In wireless sensor network, a large number of sensor nodes are distributed to cover a certain area. Sensor node is little in size with restricted processing power, memory, and limited battery life. Because of restricted battery power, wireless sensor network needs to broaden the system lifetime by reducing the energy consumption. A clustering-based protocols adapt the use of energy by giving a balance to all nodes to become a cluster head. In this paper, we concentrate on a recent hierarchical routing protocols, which are depending on LEACH protocol to enhance its performance and increase the lifetime of wireless sensor network. So our enhanced protocol called Node Ranked-LEACH is proposed. Our proposed protocol improves the total network lifetime based on node rank algorithm. Node rank algorithm depends on both path cost and number of links between nodes to select the cluster head of each cluster. This enhancement reflects the real weight of specific node to success and can be represented as a cluster head. The proposed algorithm overcomes the random process selection, which leads to unexpected fail for some cluster heads in other LEACH versions, and it gives a good performance in the network lifetime and energy consumption comparing with previous version of LEACH protocols.