2009 ISECS International Colloquium on Computing, Communication, Control, and Management
An Optimal Mechanism of LEACH Protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks
Zhiming Yang Junyi Liu
School of Computer and Communication Xi’an Heavy Machinery Institute
Lanzhou University of Technology Xi’an, China
Lanzhou, China Email: ryu_2466@yahoo.com.cn
Email: try_no.1@163.com
Abstract—Cluster-based LEACH routing protocol has the good
adaptability for large-scale wireless sensor network, but the
existing algorithms may improve the network lifetime through
adjusting the threshold, which could make the number of
cluster-heads in one certain area more or less, due to ignoring
the number of cluster-heads in the process of cluster-heads
decision. An optimal cluster-heads algorithm in this paper is
proposed to improve the network performance. The simulation
results show that our protocol improves the performance, and
thus prolong the network lifetime.
Keywords-LEACH algorithm;Wireless Sensor Networks;
Optimal cluster-heads algorithm; Network lifetime
I. INTRODUCTION
The Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) consist of a large
number of small, relatively inexpensive and low-power
sensors, which are equipped with a sensor module capable of
sensing some quantity about the environment, a digital
processor for processing the signal from the sensor and
performing network protocol functions, a radio module for
communication, and a battery to provide energy for
operation. So WSN represent a new paradigm for extracting
data from the environment, and enable the reliable
monitoring of a variety of environments for applications that
include home security, machine failure diagnosis,
surveillance [2],[3],[5],[9]. However, when WSN in the
scenario where the sensors are operating in remote or
dangerous territory, it may be impossible to retrieve the
nodes in order to recharge batteries, thus energy optimization
should be considered as the key objective when designing a
good performance routing protocol. Clustering is one of
methods used to manage network energy consumption
efficiently [2],[5]. In this case, each group of sensors has a
cluster head node that data from its respective cluster and
sends it towards the base station (BS) as a representative
sample of its cluster.
In [4], the authors equalize the number of nodes and
candidate cluster heads in each cluster in order to minimize
the energy consumption. In [7], the algorithm uses a Timer to
select cluster heads to maximum the network lifetime. Due to
ignoring the number of cluster-heads in whole network, it
could reduce the network lifetime. An optimal mechanism of
LEACH protocol is proposed in this paper to extend the
whole network lifetime.
978-1-4244-4246-1/09/$25.00 ©2009 IEEE

Xuhui Chen
School of Computer and Communication
Lanzhou University of Technology
Lanzhou, China
Email: xhchen@lut.cn
The main idea in the proposed method is that the number
of cluster-heads can be determined, due to more cluster-
heads could be leading to unnecessary data fusion, while less
cluster-heads will prolong the distance between the cluster-
heads and the ordinary sensor nodes. In next section, section
II gives a brief description of LEACH, additionally present
the problems of LEACH and radio model for calculating
energy consumption. In section III, an optimal cluster-heads
mechanism is proposed. Simulation results are presented in
section IV, before concluding the paper in section V.
II. BACKGROUNDS
Several cluster-based protocols have been proposed in
the literature, with the objective of maximizing the sensor
network lifetime. The LEACH protocol presented is a
distributed cluster-based protocol in which the cluster heads
are selected with some probability.
A. Overview of LEACH
LEACH, which was presented by Heinzelman in 2000
[2],[7],[9], is a low-energy adaptive clustering hierarchy for
WSN. The operation of LEACH can be divided into rounds.
Each round begins with a set-up phase when the clusters are
organized, followed by a steady-state phase where several
frames of data are transferred form the nodes to the cluster
head and on to the base station.
During the set-up phase, each sensor node tries to select
itself as a cluster head according to probability model. For
selecting a cluster head, each sensor node generates a
random number  between 0 and 1. If the  is less than the
threshold T(n), the sensor node selects itself as a cluster
head for current round, the threshold is presented as follows:
­ k
°° LIn  G
T n ® N  k ªr mod N k º (1)
¬ ¼
°
°̄ 0 otherwise
where N as the total number of sensor nodes in the network,
k as the number of cluster head nodes for each round, r as
the number of the current round, and G is the set of nodes
that have not been selected as cluster heads in the last N/k
rounds.
The nodes shall transmit broadcast information after
being selected as cluster heads. Each non-cluster head node
determines to which cluster it belongs by choosing the
CCCM 2009
cluster head that requires minimum communication energy.
After this, it must inform the cluster head node that it will be
a member of the cluster. Each node transmits a join-request
message (Join-REQ) back to the chosen cluster head using a
non-persistent CSMA MAC protocol.
During the steady-phase, the cluster head keeps its
receiver on to receive all the data from the nodes in the
cluster. Once the cluster head receives all the data, it can
operate on the data, and then resultant data are sent from the
cluster head to the base station.
Through the above-mentioned ways, after a period of
time, the network will enter into the next clustering process
till not meeting the network requirements. In order to
minimize the set-up overhead, the steady-state phase is long
compared to the set-up phase.
B. Radio Model for Energy Calculation
In this paper, we use the same radio model as discussed
in [3], which is the first order radio model. Here are some
assumptions for our mechanism.
x The WSN consists of the homogeneous sensor nodes.
x The distance can be measured based on the wireless
radio signal power.
x All sensor nodes have the same initial energy.
x The base station is located outside of the WSN.
Therefore, the equations used to calculate transmission
costs and receiving costs for a -bit message and a distance
d are respectively shown below:
Esend Z * Eelec  Z * H amp * d E (2)
Ereceive Z * Eelec (3)
where H amp as the transmitter amplifier, Eelec as the radio
dissipates to run the transmitter or receiver circuitry.
Receiving data is also a high cost operation, therefore,
the number of receptions and transmissions should be
minimal to reduce the energy cost of an application. When
the distance between two sensor nodes is not far,  is 2 called
the free space model. On the contrary, this paper uses the
multi-path model (=4).
C. Problems Formulation
LEACH protocol uses the distributed clustering
technology. The cluster head nodes are responsible for
broadcasting the message to all sensor nodes. After cluster
formation, the cluster head keeps its receiver on to receive all
the data from the nodes in the cluster. Once the cluster head
receives all the data, it can operate on the data, and then
resultant data are sent from the cluster head to the base
station. Due to the cluster-heads plays an important role in
whole network, so the number of the cluster-heads must be
considered.
x Less cluster-heads in the network would reduce the
network lifetime, due to prolonging the data
transmission distance from non-cluster head nodes to
the cluster-heads.
x An excess number of cluster-heads may reduce the
efficiency, resulting in too much unnecessary data
fusion.

Therefore, an optimal mechanism will be presented in
the next section.
III. OPTIMAL MECHANISM OF CLUSTER-HEADS
The optimal number of cluster-heads can be achieved
based on analyzing the network energy consumption [6].
First, the total energy consumption for data communication
can be reduced to minimum in each round. Second, it is
necessary to make sure the network energy can be
distributed to each sensor node, thus effectively extending
the network lifetime.
To simplify the algorithm, here are some assumptions in
this paper.
x Each cluster has the equal number of sensor nodes,
and a total of M nodes are deployed in a field of
size N u N . If the WSN consists of k clusters, M/k
nodes can be achieved in each cluster, including one
cluster-head and M/k-1 non-cluster head sensor
nodes.
x The WSN is covered by a circular area. The radius
is proposed as follows:
R N S (4)
x The sensor nodes in the network were uniformly
distribution, so the probability density function (PDF)
is shown below:
U 1 N2 (5)
According to the first order radio model and the process
of LEACH protocol, the energy consumption of each cluster
head consists of receiving data from the non-cluster head
nodes, data fusion, transmitting the resultant data to base
station. Additionally, the cluster heads are far away from the
base station, so they use the multi-path model to calculate the
transmission energy consumption.
Therefore, the energy consumption of one cluster-head in
a frame can be calculated using (2) and (3) as follows:
§M · M
ECH lEelec ¨  1¸  lEDA
© k ¹ k
(6)
l
 Eelec  H amp dtoBS
4
K
where l as the length of data packet, dtoBS is the distance from
cluster-head to the base station, EDA as the energy
consumption of data fusion for each signal, K as the data
fusion ratings.
Considering the distance between the cluster-head and its
clustering members is not far, so the energy consumption for
transmitting data can be calculated using the free space
model, which can be presented below:
Enon CH lEelec  lH amf dtoCH
2
(7)
with dtoCH as the distance from the non-cluster head nodes to
their cluster-head.
All the sensor nodes are deployed in the field of
size N u N , so the area of N2/k can be achieved for each
cluster. We assumed that U x , y as the probability density
function for arbitrary region, so the mathematical expectation 23 K d k opt d 47 K (14)
of distance square from the non-cluster head nodes to their
cluster-head can be calculated as follows: IV. SIMULATION RESULTS
E ª¬ d toC
2
º ³³ x 2  y 2 U x , y dxdy
H ¼
  In this section, we use Matlab to draw the picture of
nodes deployment randomly, which set 100-node sensor
³³ U T T
2
r r , rdrd
network in a field of size 50m×50m
According to (4) and (5), the (8) can be further calculated

The average energy consumption for each round(J)

below: 6
2S N Sk U N4
E ª¬ d toCH
2
º¼ ku³ ³ U r 3 drd T 5.5
T 0 r 0 2S k
1 N2 5
E ª¬ d toC
2
º
H ¼
(9)
2S k
Equation (7) using (9) can be modified as follows: 4.5
2
1 N
E non  CH lE elec  l H amf (10) 4
2S k
So the energy consumption of each cluster can be 3.5
calculated as follows:
3
§M ·
E cluster ECH  ¨  1 ¸ E non  CH (11)
© k ¹ 2.5
Therefore, the energy consumption of whole network can
be shown below: 2
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Etotal kEcluster 2MlEelec  2klEelec  MlEDA  The number of cluster-heads˄ ×10˅ 
N 2 kl MN 2 l H amf (12) Figure 1. The average energy consumption of LEACH for different
lH amf  Eelec  H amp dtoBS
4
 cluster-heads
2S K 2S k
Now, we can calculate the optimal number of cluster- From Fig. 1, we can found that when the number of
heads according to (12), which can be presented as follows: cluster-heads is 30, 40, or 50, the network consumed less
dEtotal dEcluster energy. The results are similar to (14). Additionally,
Ecluster  k u 0 simulation data are shown in Tab. II.
dk dk
TABLE II. SIMULATION DATA
M H amf
k opt N K 2
(13) FND HNA
2S Eelec  H amp d toBS
4 Numbers of Cluster-heads
(rounds) (rounds)
Simulation parameters can be set below as discussed in 20 167 663
[10]. 30 202 786

TABLE I. SIMULATION PARAMETERS 40 224 918

Network Parameters Values 50 203 761

The size of network ˄0ˈ0˅to˄50ˈ50˅ 60 196 753

Numbers of sensor nodes 100 In order to further measure the network lifetime, we
compare optimal cluster-heads algorithm with the original
Location of BS ˄25ˈ150˅ LEACH protocol in different number of cluster-heads, using
Eelec 50nJ/bit the metrics FND (First Node Dies) and HNA (Half of the
Nodes Alive).
amf 10nJ/bit/m2 From Tab. II, when kopt is 40, a 34.1% (FND) and 38.5%
amp 0.0013pJ/bit/m4 improvement is accomplished than kopt=20, and about 14.3%
(FND) and 21.9% (HNA) is respectively accomplished than
EDA 50nJ/bit/signal kopt is 60. Additionally, when kopt is 30 or 50, the network
Initial energy 0.25J lifetime can also be prolonged efficiently.
Simulation results show that when the number of cluster-
According to the date presented in Tab. I, 100m˘dtoBS˘
heads is meeting the (14) in a 100-node sensor network for
152m, so the optimal number of cluster-heads must meet the the field of size 50m×50m, the energy of the whole network
requirement as follows: can be distributed to each sensor nodes, thus extend the


network lifetime efficiently. More or less numbers for
cluster-heads may increase extra network energy
consumption, leading some sensor nodes will start to die
early.
V. CONCLUSION
Considering the number of cluster-heads in LEACH
protocol, an optimal cluster-heads mechanism is proposed in
this paper. According to simulation, a large number of
cluster-heads will increase the extra energy consumption for
data fusion. On the contrary, less cluster-heads will extend
the distance from the non-cluster head nodes to their cluster-
head, leading to some sensor nodes start to die in the early
time. Therefore, in order to avoid these cases, the proposed
algorithm in this paper can make energy balance of network
load, thus prolong the network lifetime efficiently.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors wish to acknowledge the help provided by
Lanzhou Science and Technology Bureau. The work is
supported in part by funding from Lanzhou Science and
Technology Development Fund and Gansu Science and
Technology Fund 2GS052-A52-003-11.
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