Performance Comparison of PEGASIS, HEED and LEACH Protocols in Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) is one of the most emerging and fastest growing fields in the scientific world. The most widely recognized requirement related with sensor network configuration is that sensor hubs have restricted energy spending plans. Typically, when a sensor node's battery cannot be replaced or recharged, its low battery power becomes a serious problem. The efficient use of energy source in a sensor node is a desirable criterion for scalability and prolonging the lifetime of WSN. Therefore, designing an efficient routing protocol for reducing energy consumption is one of the important issues in the network. A large number of routing protocols have been proposed in the last few decades. Some of the most popular and energy efficient routing protocols are hierarchical routing protocols like LEACH (Low Energy Adaptive Clustering Hierarchy), PEGASIS (Power Efficient GAthering in Sensor Information Systems), and HEED (Hybrid Energy Efficient Distributed clustering protocol). In this paper, these hierarchical routing protocols are studied for their pros and cons. Finally, a comparative study on these protocols is done based on several metrics such as: energy consumption, stability period, scalability, and network lifetime through simulations on different simulation environments.