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A Novel Static Cluster-Based Hierarchical Protocol for Wireless Sensor

Networks

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DOI: 10.18280/i2m.200306

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 Instrumentation Mesure Métrologie
Vol. 20, No. 3, June, 2021, pp. 161-166
Journal homepage: http://iieta.org/journals/i2m

A Novel Static Cluster-Based Hierarchical Protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks

Asma Mesmoudi1*, Samira Mesmoudi2, Zakarya Houari1, Khelifa Mostefa1
1
Department of Electronic, University of Chlef, Chlef 02180, Algeria
2
Department of Electronic, University of Laghouat, Laghouat 03000, Algeria

Corresponding Author Email: [email protected]

https://doi.org/10.18280/i2m.200306 ABSTRACT

Received: 16 March 2021 Wireless sensor networks have recently gained a lot of attention from the scientific
Accepted: 31 May 2021 community due to their very wide spectrum of applications. In such networks, the sensor
nodes have limited resources. These constraints impose many challenges to the design of
Keywords: related protocols. Especially, routing protocols should be energy-efficient for the
cluster head node, energy-efficient, prolonged network lifetime. The LEACH protocol is the most popular energy-efficient
hierarchical clustering, LEACH, SCHP hierarchical clustering protocol for WSNs that was proposed for reducing power
wireless sensor network consumption. However, LEACH suffers from several drawbacks such as the non uniform
distribution of Cluster Head nodes, the possibility of choosing a low energy node as
Cluster Head, etc. In this paper, an attempt is made to overcome this shortcoming by
introducing a new hierarchical clustering protocol, called SCHP (Static Cluster-based
Hierarchical Protocol). The SCHP protocol is based on a static cluster creation and an
optimal cluster head selection. Simulation results show that the proposal guarantees better
performance than the LEACH Protocol that is considered as the baseline in the literature.
We used many metrics, as packet loss rate, end-to-end delay, and energy consumption to
evaluate the efficiency of our proposal. We show also that the SCHP protocol can improve
the network lifetime.

1. INTRODUCTION The commonly known hierarchical routing protocols are

LEACH [6], PEGASIS [7], TEEN [8]. The LEACH protocol
In recent years, the rapid evolution of microelectronics is the first and most popular energy-efficient hierarchical
technology, communication technology, and wireless sensing clustering algorithm for WSNs that was proposed to reduce
technology, giving rise to a new type of network called power consumption [5]. However, LEACH has several
Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) [1]. This type of network has drawbacks such as the possibility of choosing a low energy
been used in a wide variety of applications and systems with node as CH, non uniform distribution of CHs, etc.
varying requirements and characteristics [2]. Particularly in To address the above problems, we propose a new
the area of health [3], environment, and safety. hierarchical routing protocol, called "SCHP: Static Cluster-
A Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) consists of a large based Hierarchical Protocol ". This protocol is based on a static
number of small electronic devices with a little power and cost cluster creation and an optimal cluster head (CH) selection.
(limited resources), capable of collecting and reporting data to The remainder of this paper is organized as follows: Section
a central point called a base station or sink. Each sensor node 2 discusses our motivation. A detailed description of the SCHP
is equipped with a microprocessor with low computing power, protocol is presented in section 3. Simulation results are
a small battery, a radio antenna, and one or several sensors [4]. reported in section 4. Finally, section 5 concludes the paper.
However, these constraints impose many challenges
concerning the protocol design of the WSN. Especially,
routing algorithms should be energy efficient to extend the 2. MOTIVATIONS
network lifetime.
Usually, network structure-based routing protocols are 2.1 LEACH algorithm
divided into three main categories including flat, hierarchical,
and location-based routing. In particular, hierarchical routing Low-Energy Adaptive Clustering Hierarchy (LEACH) [6]
protocols have proved to be able to save in the overall energy is the most popular cluster-based routing protocol in wireless
consumption of the WSN [5]. sensor networks. The LEACH protocol is the first protocol to
In hierarchical routing protocols, the clustering strategy can bring the concept of round when running. During each round,
be applied to improve the network performance. The nodes are the cluster head nodes are randomly selected from all the
grouped in fact into clusters, and a head node is assigned to sensor nodes which allows to construct dynamically several
each cluster. This node is called cluster head (CH). The CH clusters.
nodes have some responsibilities like collecting and In LEACH, the cluster head depends on the decision made
aggregating the data from their respective clusters and by sensor nodes. Indeed, all nodes choose a random number
transmitting the aggregated data to the sink node. between 0~1, and if it is less than a threshold T(n), the sensor

161
nodes will broadcast an announcement message to notify clusters, as shown in Figure 1. Thus, the number of desired
others that it is a cluster head. In each round, if a node has been clusters “k” should between 5% and 15% of the total number
elected as a cluster head, its T(n) is set to zero, so that the node of nodes [10].
will not be elected as a cluster head again. The threshold T(n)
is set using the formula:

𝑝
𝑖𝑓 𝑛 ∈ 𝐺
1
𝑇(𝑛) = {1 − 𝑝 × (𝑟 𝑚𝑜𝑑
𝑝
) (1)
0 𝑜𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑤𝑖𝑠𝑒

where, P is the desired percentage of cluster heads in the

network (usually P is 5% in [6]), r is the current round, and G
is the set of nodes that have not been cluster-heads in the last
1/p rounds.

2.2 Drawbacks of the LEACH protocol

Several studies [9-11] have shown that the use of

randomized strategies of CHs rotation and CHs selection, as
used by the LEACH protocol, suffers from several limitations.
Lung and Zhou [9] have shown that the main drawback of
so-called probabilistic protocols, particularly LEACH, is the
non-uniform distribution of cluster heads. The elected CH
nodes may have been concentrated in some part of the network, Figure 1. An example of clusters creation
which can lead some nodes to have no CH nodes in their area
of coverage. Moreover, the rotation of the CH is not always 3.1.2 Cluster size
uniform, which can influence the distribution of energy One of the reasons for the early death of a wireless sensor
consumption. network is the uneven distribution [12] of the nodes within a
Wang and Xiong [10], and Pantazis et al. [11] have shown cluster, which can also lead to an overload of the CH nodes.
that due to the probability-based CH selection strategy, the That leads our protocol to use clusters formation with an equal
number of CH nodes in LEACH as well as in other protocols number of nodes. Thus, the size of the clusters is fixed by using
using the same clustering process, cannot be guaranteed to be an optimum value defined as Z/k.
equal to the desired optimal value (k clusters).
The strategy of selecting CH nodes based on probabilities 3.1.3 Routing
in each round requires a large number of control messages, a Data routing in our protocol is performed through two levels:
significant amount of energy is then dissipated due to message MN-CHs (member nodes send their packets to the CH nodes)
duplication. and CH-Sink (CH nodes transmit their aggregated data to the
Dynamic clustering opens the door to attacks and reduces base station).
network security, where the clusters are formed repeatedly. In
this protocol category, selected CH nodes are not uniformly 3.1.4 Deployment of sensor nodes
distributed in the region. Consequently, cluster sizes, in terms Two deployment strategies are considered. Nodes can be
of the number of nodes per cluster, are highly variable. randomly deployed from an aircraft for example, or they can
The use of a process for selecting CHs and building be placed one by one in a deterministic way by a human or a
deterministic clusters would greatly reduce the drawbacks of robot.
random CH selection methods. For these multiple reasons, we To minimize the coverage gaps in a network, many
propose a new hierarchical routing protocol, called SCHP, to protocols are based on a network of sensors that are uniformly
overcome the variations in cluster sizes of the network. The distributed compared to those that are randomly distributed.
SCHP protocol is unique in its way to elect the CH nodes. The Figure 2 is an illustrative example of two different deployment
SCHP protocol is described in further sections. strategies with the same number of sensor nodes.

3. THE SCHP PROTOCOL

This section presents our proposed routing protocol. The

used notations are given at the end of the paper, and then the
detailed description of the protocol is exposed.

3.1 Protocol characteristics

In this section, the characteristics of our protocol are (a) (b)

discussed.
Figure 2. Illustrating the deployment strategy when: (a)
3.1.1 Number of clusters Sensors are uniformly distributed; (b) Sensors are randomly
In our SCHP protocol, the network is partitioned into static distributed

162
 The deployment of sensor nodes is a crucial phase that can (1) Step1: After the completion of the previous three
affect significantly the coverage quality of the network phases, all non CH nodes decide which cluster they belong to
monitoring area. Figure 2 shows that with a uniform according to the strength of the RSSI signal.
distribution deployment strategy a good coverage quality is (2) Step2: Each non CH node must inform the CH that it
ensured. Therefore, our SCHP protocol uses a random will be a member of its cluster. They reply then with the JOIN_
deployment of nodes with a uniform distribution. So, the REQ message, which contains their identifier (ID).
whole network is represented by a set of grid cells and each (3) Step3: After the reception of the JOIN_ REQ
cell of the grid contains an equal number of nodes. message, each CH starts by identifies the set of sensors that is
in the same cluster and assigns then an index for each received
3.2 Protocol description ID. This index is based on the order of receiving messages, as
shown in Figure 4.
The basic assumptions considered during the construction
of our protocol are presented as follows:
(1) Each sensor node has a unique identifier ID.
(2) All sensor nodes monitor the environment at a fixed
interval, and they always have data to send to the final user.
(3) The sink node has an unlimited energy resource and
has high transmission power. As such, all sensor nodes are
within the range of this node.
(4) The nodes can use the power control to regulate the
transmission power according to the transmission distance if
necessary. Thus, a CH can directly perform transmission to the
sink node.
(5) All nodes are considered nomadic or stationary.

Our proposed routing protocol involves the following Figure 4. Illustrating the organization phase
phases:
3.2.5 Scheduling phase
3.2.1 Planification phase When the clusters are formed, each CH will produce a
In this phase, the whole network is represented by a set of TDMA schedule and notify all the member nodes in the cluster.
grid cells. Each cell of the grid (a number K of cells) will be After the reception of the schedule by a member node, it
related to a set of nodes, which will form a cluster. Moreover, transmits data to its correspondent CH node in its time slots
each CH takes as its position the center of gravity (COG: and remains in the sleep state in other slots.
Center Of Gravity) of each cell, as shown in Figure 3.
3.2.6 Sharing phase
In this phase, each CH node broadcasts a message to their
member’s nodes that contains the list 𝐿_𝑀𝑁 of the IDs and their
appropriate index.
where,

L_MN ={idMN1 , indexMN1 ,, …, idMNm , indexMNm } (2)

After receiving the message from its CH node, each member

node identifies the member nodes that are in the same cluster
and saves the information received containing the identifiers
of the member nodes with its index. With this method, all
nodes in the same cluster have the same saved information.

3.2.7 Transmission phase

Figure 3. Illustrating of clusters In this phase, the data transfer to the sink will take place.
Using the TDMA scheduler, member nodes transmit their
3.2.2 Initialization phase captured data during their slots. This allows them to turn off
The initialization phase starts by sending an initialization their communication interfaces outside of their slots to save
message from the base station to all sensor nodes in the energy. This data is then aggregated by the CHs who merge
network. and compress it, and, send the final result to the sink.
Our proposed protocol provides the conception of rounds. It
3.2.3 Announcement phase runs with many rounds (round 0, round 1, …, round m), and
Each CH node (the nodes located at the COG of each cell) each round is triggered to find out the optimal CH. The round
when receiving an initialization message, broadcasts an contains different phases for two main objectives: the first is
announcement message to other nodes by using the same to form clusters, and the second one is to perform data
transmission energy. transmission.
After nodes are deployed, the network starts with round 0
3.2.4 Organization phase (r=0) to select the CH using all phases. After a certain
This phase includes three steps: predetermined time, the network will move to a new round. In

163
a new round and all the following rounds (r ≠ 0), this process We evaluated the energy consumption of the sensor nodes
is repeated but the announcement phase and the organization during five rounds. We considered a network with 150 nodes.
phase are ignored. This is because the election of the CHs will As shown in Figure 5, the total energy consumption of the
be automatic. nodes in the SCHP protocol is a little higher than that of the
The elected CH is the node corresponding to the appropriate LEACH protocol in rounds 0 and 1, but after some time, the
ID of the minimal index saved by each member node in the energy consumption of the SCHP protocol decreases
Sharing phase of the previous round. As the information compared to that of the LEACH protocol. This is due to the
(containing the identifiers of the member nodes with its index) elimination of energy-intensive tasks (cluster organization in
saved by the member nodes of each cluster is the same, the rounds ≠ 0) performed by the CH when it is elected in each
nodes know directly their CH for this round. round.
With this process, just after the reception of the initialization
message of new round r, the CHs transmit directly the 4.1.2 Energy consumption of CHs and member nodes
scheduling messages to the nodes of its cluster, then passes Concerning the SCHP protocol, it is easy to see from Figure
directly to the transmission phase and like that for all the 6 that in round 0 the average energy consumption of either
following rounds. member nodes and CH nodes is very high compared to that of
the LEACH protocol. The rate of more than 31.95% is noted
for the CH nodes on one hand and a rate of more than 28.87%
4. SIMULATION AND RESULTS is noted for member nodes on the other hand. This is due to the
tasks dedicated to the sharing of the member nodes' table. We
In this section, we present a performance evaluation of the could notice that the average energy consumption of nodes in
SCHP protocol through a set of experiments. Indeed, we the SCHP protocol decreases for the rest of the rounds. This is
provide extensive simulations to verify performance metrics due to the end of cluster organization tasks. The decrease is
such as energy consumption, network lifetime, and packet loss with an average rate of 24.42% less for CH nodes and 13.82%
rate. In the set of simulations, we compare the SCHP protocol less for member nodes.
with LEACH [6], which is considered as the baseline in the
literature. To that end, we implemented SCHP using the NesC
[13] programming language to be integrated with TinyOS. The
simulations are done using the TOSSIM [14] environment. We
have also used PowerTOSSIM, a dedicated plugin that models
power consumption.
In our simulations, we make use of several networks that
have a size varying from 50 to 200 nodes (of MICA2 type).
Among these nodes, 10% of nodes are CH. The nodes are
distributed uniformly and randomly in an area of 100 ×100 m.
Furthermore, the Lossy propagation model is employed.
The performance of routing protocols is evaluated in terms
of the following metrics: energy consumption, network
lifetime, packet loss rate, and the average end-to-end delay. Figure 6. Average energy consumption of CH node and
member nodes
4.1 Energy consumption
4.1.3 Evaluation of average energy consumption with respect
Sensor nodes have limited power source. Therefore, routing to network size
protocols must be energy efficient to extend the life of the As shown in Figure 7, we notice that the average energy
network. To evaluate the energy consumption, we used consumed in the network is independent of the number of the
PowerTOSSIM plugin with TinyViz to analyze the energy of deployed nodes. This is due to the existence of the hierarchical
the two protocols. topology in both protocols that make them very scalable.
Besides, we observe a rate of 14.62% less dissipated energy
4.1.1 The additional energy consumption for our SCHP protocol compared to the LEACH protocol. This
is due to the decrease in the number of control messages used
in the cluster organization phase.

Figure 7. Average energy consumption with respect to

Figure 5. Additional energy consumption network size

164
4.2 The network lifetime

The network lifetime has become the key characteristic

allowing to evaluate of key management protocols for sensor
networks. We measured it concerning the number of dead
nodes, which indicates when nodes exhaust all their energies.

4.2.1 Number of dead sensor nodes

As shown in Figure 8, it is clear that the SCHP protocol
outperforms the LEACH protocol. Indeed, our protocol
consumes less energy when performs network operations.

Figure 10. Packet loss rate with respect to network size

4.4 Average end-to-end delay

This performance metric, stems from the necessity, for

certain real-time applications, to obtain the information as
soon as possible to take the necessary measures. Therefore, the
end-to-end delay is defined as the total amount of time the
system takes to route the data from the source to the base
station.
Figure 11 shows that the two protocols have a very close
delay. Once the network size increases, the average delay also
increases. The SCHP protocol performs slightly better than the
Figure 8. Number of dead sensor nodes with respect to time LEACH protocol. The reason is that this protocol uses a
evolution uniform distribution of clusters, which decreases the load on
the CH nodes and decreases the distance between them and
4.2.2 Distribution of dead nodes their member nodes.
Figure 9 shows the distribution of dead nodes for both
protocols. We can see that the dead nodes in the LEACH
protocol are distributed in specific areas, contrary to the SCHP
protocol where the distribution is homogeneous in all the cells
of the area. Therefore, this would allow for better monitoring
of the desired events along the network lifetime.

Figure 11. Average end-to-end delay with respect to network

size

5. CONCLUSIONS
Figure 9. Distribution of dead sensor nodes
Because of the limited energy resources of sensors, energy
4.3 Packet loss rate efficiency is one of the main challenges in designing protocols
for WSNs. Clustering is proven to be an effective technique to
The choice of this metric, as a performance criterion, stems attain energy efficiency. Many hierarchical clustering
from the necessity in some applications to exchange critical protocols focus on electing an optimal CH node.
data. In this paper, we have presented a new hierarchical routing
As shown in Figure 10, we can see that the packet loss rates protocol, called "SCHP: Static Clustering Hierarchy Protocol".
exchanged are tolerable for both protocols. We can see that the We make use of a static clustering strategy, with an equal
packet loss rate is higher in LEACH than in the SCHP protocol. number of nodes for each formed cluster. During rounds that
This is because the LEACH protocol has clusters with a large differ from 0 and based on an analysis of received information
number of members, which leads to collusions between the from nodes either CH nodes or members, the cluster head (CH)
nodes, and has a higher number of dead nodes compared to the selection and CH nodes rotation are automatically performed.
SCHP protocol. The simulation results showed that the performance of the
proposed protocol compared to the LEACH routing protocol

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