IEEE INFOCOM 2011 Workshop on M2MCN-2011

Enhancing the Performance of LEACH Protocol in

Wireless Sensor Networks
Yun Li1,2, Nan Yu1, Weiyi Zhang 3, Weiliang Zhao 1, Xiaohu You2, Mahmoud Daneshmand4
1 Laboratory of Wireless Networks, Chongqing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Chongqing 400065, P.R. China
2 National Mobile Communications Research Laboratory, Southeast University of China, Nanjing 210096, P.R. China
3 North Dakota State University, Fargo, ND 58105, USA
4 AT&T Labs Research, Middletown, NJ, USA
energy in a relatively balanced way so as to prolong network
lifetime.

Abstract- LEACH protocol is one of the clustering routing

protocols in wireless sensor networks. The advantage of LEACH
is that each node has the equal probability to be a cluster head,
which makes the energy dissipation of each node be relatively
balanced. In LEACH protocol, time is divided into many rounds,
in each round, all the nodes contend to be cluster head according
to a predefined criterion. This paper focuses on how to set the
time length of each round, to prolong the lifetime of the network
and increase throughput, which is denoted as the amount of data
packs sent to the sink node. The functions of lifetime and
throughput related to the time length of each round are deduced.
These functions can be used to enhance the performance of
cluster-based wireless sensor networks in terms of lifetime and
throughput.

Although some works have been conducted on the

performance and enhancement of LEACH protocol[1][6], there
is few works to investigate the influence of time length of
rounds on the performance of LEACH protocol. This paper
aims at this issue and discusses how to prolong the lifetime and
increase throughput of cluster-based wireless sensor network
by configuring reasonable round time.
The remainder of this paper is organized as follows.
Section II gives the overview of LEACH protocol. Section III
analyzes the relations of lifetime and throughput to the time
length of rounds. The numerical results are given in Section IV.
Section V concludes the work of this paper.

Keywords- wireless sensor networks; LEACH protocol; lifetime;

throughput

II.
I.

LEACH is an adaptive clustering routing protocol proposed

by Wendi B. Heinzelman, et al. The implementation process of
LEACH includes many rounds. Each round consists of the setup phase and the steady data transmission phase. In the set-up
phase, the cluster head nodes are randomly elected from all the
sensor nodes and several clusters are constructed dynamically.
In the steady data transmission phase, member nodes in every
cluster send data to their own cluster head, the cluster head
compresses the data that received from member nodes and
sends the compressed data to the sink node. LEACH protocol
periodically elects the cluster head nodes and re-establishes the
clusters according to a round time, which ensures energy
dissipation of each node in the network is relatively evenly.

INTRODUCTION

A wireless sensor network system usually includes sensor

nodes, sink node and management node. A large number of
sensor nodes are deployed in the monitored area, constituting a
network through the way of self-organization. The data
monitored by sensor nodes is transmitted along other nodes
one by one, that will reach the sink node after a multi-hop
routing and finally reach the management node through the
wired and (or) wireless Internet[2]. The energy, the ability of
signal process, storage capacity and communication capability
of sensor nodes are very limited. A primary design goal for
wireless sensor networks is to use the energy efficiently[3].
Cluster-based routing algorithm has a better energy utilization
rate compared with non-cluster routing algorithm[8].

The cluster head election algorithm in LEACH is as

follows[4]. All the sensor nodes generate a random number
between 0~1, and if it is less than a threshold T ( n) , the
sensor nodes will broadcast an announcement message to
notify others that it is a cluster head. In each round, if a node
has been elected as a cluster head, its T (n) is set to zero, so
that the node will not be elected as a cluster head again. T(n)
can be expressed as:
P

, nG

T (n) = 1 P [r mod(1/ P)]

0
otherwise

The basic idea of clustering routing[3][7] is to use the

information aggregation mechanism in the cluster head to
reduce the amount of data transmission, thereby, reduce the
energy dissipation in communication and in turn achieve the
purpose of saving energy of the sensor nodes. In the clustering
routing algorithms for wireless networks, LEACH (low-energy
adaptive clustering hierarchy)[4][5] is well-known because it is
simple and efficient. LEACH divides the whole network into
several clusters, and the run time of network is broken into
many rounds. In each round, the nodes in a cluster contend to
be cluster head according to a predefined criterion. In LEACH
protocol, all the sensor nodes have the same probability to be a
cluster head, which makes the nodes in the network consume

978-1-4244-9920-5/11/$26.00 2011 IEEE

LEACH PROTOCOL

223

Where P is the percentage of the number of clusters in the

network (usually P is 0.05 in [1][5][6]), r is the number of the
election rounds, r mod(1/ P) is the number of nodes which
have been elected as cluster heads in the round r, and G is the
set of nodes that have not been elected as cluster heads in
round r.

According to LEACH protocol, there are m frames in the

time t , so t = m T frame , here T frame is the time length of each
frame. Therefore,

t fdn = n tr = ( + m T frame )

(2)

Given the initial energy E0 of sensor node, the t fdn can be

deduced according to the energy dissipation in cluster set-up
phase and data transmission phase.

After cluster head election, the cluster head broadcasts its

identity message to non-cluster head nodes. The non-cluster
head nodes send a join-REQ message to the nearest cluster
head to join in the corresponding cluster. After the cluster head
receives all the join-REQ information, it will produce a TDMA
schedule, and notify all the member nodes in the cluster. After
a member node receives the schedule, it sends data in its own
time slots, and remains in the sleep state in other slots. After a
frame time of data transmission, the cluster head runs the data
compression algorithm to process the data and sends the results
directly to the sink node[5].

A. The energy dissipation of a cluster head and a member

node in the set-up phase
Let the number of sensor nodes in a network is N, which
includes k clusters. Then there are average N nodes in each
k

cluster, including one cluster head and ( N 1) member (nonk

cluster) nodes.

LEACH protocol lets the data transmission phase last for a

fixed period of time[5], then enter into a new round of cluster
head election. The time length of round has obviously
influence on the performance of LEACH protocol. In order to
decrease the overhead of set-up phase, we hope to increase the
time length of round, which increases the time for data
transmission. However, prolonging the time length of round
also increases the energy consumption of cluster head, which
will causes some nodes die early and in turn shortens the
lifetime of wireless sensor networks. So, regarding to
configuration of time length of round, there is a trade off
between lifetime and throughput.

We assume N nodes are evenly distributed in MM area,

the coordinate of the sink node is (Xsink, Ysink), the initial energy
of each node is E0, the length of data message is L bits, and the
length of control message is P bits.
A simple model for the radio hardware energy dissipation
is adopted [4][5]. The transmitter dissipates energy to run the
radio electronics and the power amplifier. The receiver
dissipates energy to run the radio electronics. The radio energy
dissipation model is shown in Fig.2. Then the energy
expenditure for transmitting L-bit message to d distance is:

The following will discuss how to set the time length of

round according to life time and throughput.

ETx (l , d ) = l Eelec + l d

(3)

And the energy expenditure for receiving L-bit message is:

III.

ANALYZING THE INFLUENCE OF TIME LENGTH OF

ERx (l ) = l Eelec

ROUND ON THE LIFETIME AND THROUGHPUT

We suppose that the time of set-up phase is , and the

steady data transmission time is t , then the time length of
every round is tr = ( + t ) . For simpleness, we define the time
when the first sensor node dies as the lifetime of the network,
which is denoted as t fd n . It is noted that the following analysis
can be easily extended to other definition of lifetime.
The relationship of the lifetime t fdn and t is shown in Fig. 1.
From Fig.1, we can obtain that
t fdn = n ( + t )

In Eq. (3) and Eq. (4), the electronics energy expenditure for
one bit, Eelec , depends on factors such as the digital coding,
modulation, filtering and spreading of the signal. Whereas the
amplifier energy expenditure for one bit, d , depends on the
distance from the sender to the receiver and the acceptable biterror rate. In this paper, the channel model in the cluster is free
space propagation model, and the channels between cluster
head nodes and the sink node are multi-path fading channel.
For the free space propagation, = 2 , and is denoted as fs .
For multi-path fading channel, = 4 , and

(1)

(4)

is denoted as mp .

In this paper, we set the same communication energy

parameters as that in [5] i.e.

Where n is the number of rounds after which the first sensor

node dies.

Eelec = 50nJ / bit , fs = 10 pJ / bit / m2 , mp =0.0013pJ / bit / m4 and the

energy consumption for data aggregation is set
to EDA = 5nJ / bit / signal .
Figure 1. The lifetime t fdn of the network.

224

Ech,set up = Ech1 + Ech4 + Ech5

= (2
Eelec l

l d

1 M2
N
N
1) p Eelec + p fs
2 k
k
k

(12)

The energy dissipation of a member node in the set-up

phase is:

Eelec l

Enon ch , set up = Enon ch 2 + Enon ch 3 + Enon ch 6

Figure 2. Radio energy dissipation model.

= 3 p Eelec + p fs

According to the model shown in Fig.2, in the set-up phase

the energy dissipation of the cluster head node and a member
node is made up of the following components:

(13)

B. The energy dissipation of the steady data transmission

phase
The steady data transmission phase operation is broken into
several frames as shown in Fig.3.

(1). Ech1 : The energy consumption of a cluster head node

that broadcasts its identity message to the whole network.
Assuming the broadcast range of a cluster head is the size
of its cluster, Ech1 is:

Ech1 = p Eelec + p fs d 2tononch

1 M2

2 k

(5)

(2). Enon ch 2 : The energy consumption that a member node

receives a broadcast message is:

Enon ch 2 = p Eelec

(6)

(3). Enon ch 3 : The energy dissipation for a member node to

send join-REQ message to its cluster head is:

Enonch3 = p Eelec + p fs d 2toch

Figure 3. The steady data transmission phase.

(7)

The energy dissipation of a cluster head and a member

node in each frame are shown as follows [5][7]:

(4). Ech 4 : The energy consumption that a cluster head node

receives join-REQ messages from the member nodes is:

Ech 4

N
= p Eelec ( 1)
k

(1). Ech , steady stage : The energy dissipation of a cluster head

node during a single frame is:

(8)

Ech , steady stage = (

(5). Ech 5 : The energy dissipation for a cluster head node to

send TDMA schedule message to the member nodes is:

Ech5 = ( p Eelec + p fs d 2tonon ch ) (

N
1)
k

(9)

(2). Enon ch , steady stage : The energy dissipation of a member

node during a single frame is:

Enonch,steadystage = l Eelec + l fs d 2toch

(10)

= l Eelec + l fs

In Eq. (5), Eq. (7) and Eq. (9), the average distance from
cluster head to the member nodes ( d tonon ch ) is equal to the

1 M2

2 k

1 M2

2 k

(15)

Assuming there are m frames in the steady data

transmission phase, the energy dissipation of a cluster in steady
data transmission phase of a round is:

distance from member nodes to the cluster head ( dtoch ) [5],

that is:

E[d 2tonon ch ] = E[d 2toch ] =

(14)

N
+ l EDA + l Eelec + l mp d 4 toSINK
K

(6). Enon ch 6 : The energy consumption that the member

node receives a TDMA schedule is:

Enon ch 6 = p Eelec

N
1) l Eelec
K

Ecluster ,steady stage = m Ech, steady stage + (

(11)

= m [(

In summary, the energy dissipation of a cluster head node

in the set-up phase is:

225

N
1) m Enon ch, steady stage
K

(16)
N
N
1) l Eelec + l EDA + l Eelec + l mp d 4 toSINK ]
K
K
1 M2
N
+ ( 1) m (l Eelec + l fs

)
2 k
K

So, the energy dissipation of each cluster in every round is:

sumN = 0

N
e = Ech , set up + ( 1) Enon ch , set up
K
+ Ecluster , steady stage

M
1))
N
M
for ( j = 0; j + +; j (
1))
N
for (i = 0; i + +; i (

N
N
1) p Eelec + p fs
k
k
2
N
1 M

+ ( 1) (3 p Eelec
K
2 k
N
1 M2
+ p fs

) + m [( 1) l Eelec
K
2 k
N
+ l EDA + l Eelec + l mp d 4 toSINK ]
K
N
1 M2
+ ( 1) m (l Eelec + l fs

)
K
2 k

M
M
(0.5 + j ) X sin k ]2 + [(
(0.5 + i ) Ysin k ]2
N
N
sumN = sumN + dtoSINK

= (2

dtoSINK = [

(17)

end
end
dtoSINK =

Figure 5. The algorithm calculating the

dtoSINK

C. The number of rounds (n) during the lifetime t fdn

Eq. (2) denotes that the network lifetime t fdn is the product
of the number of rounds (n) and the time length (tr) of each
round. (tr) is the sum of and t, and t includes m number of
frames. So in the following, we convert the relationship
between t fdn and t to the function of t fdn and m.

In Eq. (14), dtoSINK is the distance from the cluster head

node to the sink node. Assuming N nodes are evenly
distributed in MM area, and the network is broken into N
squares. As shown in Fig.4, every center of the squares is
placed a sensor node. The coordinate of the sensor node U that
is in row i and column j, can be described as

U i, j = [

sumN
N

In order to deduce the function of t fdn and m, we need to

obtain the number of rounds (n) after which the energy of
some node is exhausted. Let

M
M
(0.5 + j ),
(0.5 + i )] . Then we can get
N
N

dtoSINK according to the algorithm shown in Fig.5.

n= f

N
+
k

(18)

N
is the number of sensor nodes in one cluster,
k
N
. According to LEACH protocol, the
and f 0 , 0 <
k

Where

M
1
N

probability that all the sensor nodes work as cluster head is the

N
rounds, every sensor node works as cluster
k
N
head and member with f times and f 1 times
k

N
respectively. So after f rounds, all the sensor nodes in a
k

same. In f

network have the same remaining energy.

M
1
N

N
, only part of the sensor
k
nodes in a cluster work as cluster head in the round. And
However, as is less than

Figure 4. The distribution of sensor nodes

these nodes will die first because cluster heads consume more
energy than member nodes.
When a senor node dies, its remaining energy is zero, so

E 0 N
f = 0
/
k
e

(19)

where x is the maximum integer that is not bigger than x.

226

transmission phase and k clusters in the network, the amount of

data packets that all the cluster head nodes send to sink node is:

Let E be the remaining energy of a sensor node after it

works for f

N
E 0 N N
rounds, E = E0 0
/ e .

k
k k
e

(24)
Q = k nm
As n is the function of m, so Q can be expressed as the
function of m that determines the time length of round.

If E Ech < 0 , which means the node does not have enough
energy to work as a cluster head for a whole round, then
0 < < 1 , and

E
E 0 N N
/ e / Ech
= = E0 0
Ech
k k
e

IV.

NUMERICAL ANALYSIS

(20)

In this section, we give the numerical results of lifetime

and throughput for different network configuration.

Else if E Ech 0 , which means the node has enough

energy to serve as a cluster head for a full round time, then,

In numerical analysis, N=100, M=100m, the coordinate of

the sink node is (50,175), the initial energy of each
node E0 = 2 J .

E0 0 N N
E0 e / k k e Ech

= 1+
Enon ch

In [5], the optimal number of clusters (k) was deduced for a

sensor network with N nodes. However, the authors in [5]
ignored the energy dissipation in the set-up phase of LEACH
protocol. In this paper, we deduce the optimal k to minimize
the energy consumption in a round (E), which is shown in
Eq.(25). E includes the energy dissipation in both the set-up
phase and steady data transmission phase.

(21)

Given the initial energy (E0) of sensor nodes, the number of

nodes (N), and the number of cluster (k) in a network, the
number of rounds (n) is the function of e, Ech and Enon-ch. Ech
and Enon-ch are the energy consumption of a cluster head and a
member node in a round time, respectively, which are
expressed in Eq. (22) and Eq. (23).

E = k e

k * = argmin( E ) = argmin(k e)

Ech = Ech, set -up + m Ech,steady -stage

1 M2
N
N
= (2 1) p Eelec + p fs
+
2 k
k
k
(22)
N
N
m {( 1) l Eelec + l EDA +
K
K

0.24

Enon ch = Enon ch , set up + m Enon ch, steady stage

M2
+
k
M2

]
k

N=100 M=100
N=100 M=250
N=100 M=350
N=100 M=500

0.22
Energy dissipation of each round E(J)

1
2
1
m [l Eelec + l fs
2

= 3 p Eelec + p fs

(23)

According to Eq. (17), Eq. (22) and Eq. (23), e, Ech and
Enon-ch are the functions of m. So n and in turn t fdn are the
functions of m.

(26)

Fig. 6 shows the total energy of a sensor network in a

round for different N and M. From Fig. 6, we can see that k=2
is optimal when N=100, M=100m. However, in [5], the k=5 is
optimal for the same network configuration as the energy
dissipation in the set-up phase is ignored. Fig. 6 also shows
that the optimal value of k increases with the value of M.

l Eelec + l mp d 4 toSINK}

(25)

So the optimal k, denoted as k* is,

0.2
0.18
0.16
0.14
0.12
0.1
0.08
0.06
0.04

D. The throughput Q vs the time length of round

In this paper, we define the throughput Q as the amount of
data packets transmitted from cluster head nodes to the sink
node during t fdn .

4
6
8
10
The number of cluster head nodes k

12

14

Figure 6. The energy dissipation E with different k

When k takes different values, the relationship of

throughput (Q) and the frames m is shown in Fig.7. From Fig.7,
we can conclude that the throughput Q will increase when k
increases. And Q also increases with m. However, Q will
maintains in the largest value when m is larger than 5.

In the steady data transmission phase of LEACH protocol,

every cluster head receives ( N / k 1) packets from its
member nodes in each frame, compresses the ( N / k 1)
packets into one packet, and then sends the aggregate packet to
the sink node. So a cluster head sends one packet to the sink
node per frame. If there are m frames in the steady data

Fig.8 shows the relationship of the lifetime t fdn and the

frames m for different time of the set-up phase ( ). In Fig. 8,

227

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From Fig.7 and Fig. 8, we think that m=5 is good for tradeoff between lifetime and throughput.
4

3.5

x 10

k=2
k=3
k=4
k=5
k=9

Throughput Q

2.5

1.5

0.5

10
15
20
The number of frame m

25

30

Figure 7. The throughput Q with different k and m.

The lifetime tfdn (s)

14000

a=Tframe

12000

a=5Tframe

10000

a=20Tframe

a=10Tframe

8000

6000

4000

2000

10
15
20
The number of frame m

Figure 8. The lifetime

V.

25

30

t fd n

CONCLUSION:

The LEACH is a well-known routing protocol for clusterbased wireless sensor networks. This paper analyses the
performance of LEACH-based wireless sensor networks in
terms of lifetime and throughput. The reasonable number of
frames in a LEACH round is deduced to prolong the lifetime
and increase the throughput.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
We would like to take this opportunity to thank the
anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and
suggestions. This work is supported in parts by National
Science Foundation of China (Grant No.61071118) and the
Natural Science Foundation Project of CQ CSTC.

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