Energy-efficient modified LEACH protocol for IoT application

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have a wide range of applications in various fields. One of the most recent emerging applications are in the world of Internet of Things (IoT), which allows inter-connection of different objects or devices through the Internet. However, limited battery power is the major concern of WSNs as compared to mobile ad-hoc network, which affects the longevity of the network. Hence, a lot of research has been focused on to minimise the energy consumption of the WSNs. Designing of a hierarchical clustering algorithm is one of the numerous approaches to minimise the energy of the WSNs. In this study, the existing low-energy adaptive clustering hierarchy (LEACH) clustering protocol is modified by introducing a threshold limit for cluster head selection with simultaneously switching the power level between the nodes. The proposed modified LEACH protocol outperforms as compared to the existing LEACH protocol with 67% rise in throughput and extending the number of alive nodes to 1750 rounds which can be used to enhance the WSN lifetime. When compared with other energy efficient protocols, it is found that the proposed algorithm performs better in terms of stability period and network lifetime in different scenarios of area, energy and node density.