Wireless Sensor Network Performance Research for LEACH Based on Multi-Agent Simulation

Due to the limited data transmission capability, most of the sensor nodes in the wireless sensor networks(WSN) cannot send data to the base station directly. In most situations the data transfer has to be done by the means of multi-hop. Low Energy Adaptive Clustering Hierarchy(LEACH) is one of the most widely used multi-hop strategies. However, as there are many random factors interrelated with each other in the networks, it's very difficult to evaluate the network performance for LEACH, which has become a hotpot of current research. Since lifetime is the most important network performance indicator, this paper collects the network operation parameters including working period through multi-agent simulation and computational experiments, and evaluates the network performance in different situations based on the collected data. The results would provide practical advices for optimizing the network performance and come up with a new thinking of adopting multi-agent simulation in WSN research.