Analysis of Low Energy Adaptive Clustering Hierarchy (LEACH) protocol

Abstract

Sensor network consists of tiny sensors and actuators with general purpose computing elements to cooperatively monitor physical or environmental conditions, such as temperature, pressure, etc. Wireless Sensor Networks are uniquely characterized by properties like limited power they can harvest or store, dynamic network topology, large scale of deployment. Sensor networks have a huge application in fields which includes habitat monitoring, object tracking, fire detection, land slide detection and traffic monitoring. Based on the network topology, routing protocols in sensor networks can be classified as flat-based routing, hierarchical-based routing and location-based routing. These protocols are quite simple and hence are very susceptible to attacks like Sinkhole attack, Selective forwarding, Sybil attack, Wormholes, HELLO flood attack, Acknowledgement spoofing or altering, replaying routing information. Low Energy Adaptive Clustering Hierarchy (LEACH) is an energy-efficient hierarchical-based routing protocol. Our prime focus was on the analysis of LEACH based upon certain parameters like network lifetime, stability period, etc. and also the effect of selective forwarding attack and degree of heterogeneity on LEACH protocol. After a number of simulations, it was found that the stability region’s length is considerably increased by choosing an optimal value of heterogeneity; energy is not properly utilized and throughput is decreased in networks compromised by selective forwarding attack but the number of cluster-heads per round remains unaffected in such networks.