Study on a Cluster-Chain Routing Protocol in Wireless Sensor Networks

The energy constraint and the low power communication requirements amplify the significance of the energy efficient routing protocols in wireless sensor networks (WSNs). The primary aim to design a routing protocol for WSN is to improve the energy efficiency and prolong the network lifetime. In this paper, we propose a cluster-chain routing protocol (CCRP), which adopts a more balanced cluster-head selection algorithm and an improved data transmission mechanism from the cluster-heads to the base station. Simulation results indicate that, for a 100mx100rn network with the initial energy 0.5J in each node, the proposed CCRP outperforms LEACH by about 78%, 150% and 130% in terms of rounds when 1%, 50%, and 100% of nodes die, respectively.