Formal comparison of LEACH and its extensions

Abstract Wireless Sensor Networks comprise of clusters of low-powered sensor nodes dispersed over a vast area, mostly in an unsupervised and remote environment, with inadequate computational and detection capabilities. The batteries of these sensor nodes are often small and irreplaceable, which limits the life span of a node. It is therefore essential to retain the node energy as long as possible, otherwise a large number of nodes would die at an early stage and the network would become dysfunctional. Numerous protocols are developed for the efficient energy utilization of a WSN. However, comparing the protocols on a common ground is a big challenge, which has traditionally been accomplished using simulations and other testing techniques. To cater for the limitations of these methods we propose to leverage upon the complete and sound nature of model checking i.e., a widely used formal method. For understanding our methodology, we have created a formal framework specifically to compare the LEACH protocol with its future extensions LEACH-C and LEACH-F. The proposed approach has been found to be quite effective in verifying safety, liveness and reachability properties under generalized topologies of networks. Based on our analysis results, we conclude that LEACH-F protocol is the most energy efficient among the other alternatives.