A survey on clustering protocols in Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless sensor Networks has gained major attention from most of the recent research community. The crucial role of efficient energy management of sensor nodes is emphasized by lesser life time and capacity of the sensor nodes. Clustering is one of those ways of efficiently balancing the load on the sensor nodes. Of the many clustering protocols LEACH (Low Energy Adaptive Clustering Hierarchy) is found to be the most well-known cluster-based protocol. In this paper, we compare LEACH, a cluster-based protocol with its three modified version protocols that helps in prolonging the lifetime of the sensor networks. The modified versions taken into consideration are LEACH – C, ER-LEACH, LEACH – SM.