A Study of Wireless Sensor Network Routing Protocols for Maintenance Access Hatch Condition Surveillance

Maintenance Access Hatches are used to ensure urban safety and aesthetics while facilitating the management of power lines, telecommunication lines, and gas pipes. Such facilities necessitate affordable and effective surveillance. In this paper, we propose a FiCHS (Fixed Cluster head centralized Hierarchical Static clustering) routing protocol that is suitable for underground maintenance hatches using WSN (Wireless Sensor Network) technology. FiCHS is compared with three other protocols, LEACH, LEACH-C, and a simplified LEACH, based on an ns-2 simulation. FiCHS was observed to exhibit the highest levels of power and data transfer efficiency.