Proceedings of the 33rd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences - 2000

Energy-Efficient Communication Protocol for Wireless Microsensor Networks

Wendi Rabiner Heinzelman, Anantha Chandrakasan, and Hari Balakrishnan
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Cambridge, MA 02139
fwendi, anantha, harig@mit.edu
Abstract
Wireless distributed microsensor systems will enable the
reliable monitoring of a variety of environments for both
civil and military applications. In this paper, we look at
communication protocols, which can have significant impact on the overall energy dissipation of these networks.
Based on our findings that the conventional protocols of
direct transmission, minimum-transmission-energy, multihop routing, and static clustering may not be optimal for
sensor networks, we propose LEACH (Low-Energy Adaptive Clustering Hierarchy), a clustering-based protocol that
utilizes randomized rotation of local cluster base stations
(cluster-heads) to evenly distribute the energy load among
the sensors in the network. LEACH uses localized coordination to enable scalability and robustness for dynamic networks, and incorporates data fusion into the routing protocol to reduce the amount of information that must be transmitted to the base station. Simulations show that LEACH
can achieve as much as a factor of 8 reduction in energy
dissipation compared with conventional routing protocols.
In addition, LEACH is able to distribute energy dissipation
evenly throughout the sensors, doubling the useful system
lifetime for the networks we simulated.

1. Introduction
Recent advances in MEMS-based sensor technology,
low-power analog and digital electronics, and low-power
RF design have enabled the development of relatively inexpensive and low-power wireless microsensors [2, 3, 4].
These sensors are not as reliable or as accurate as their expensive macrosensor counterparts, but their size and cost
enable applications to network hundreds or thousands of
these microsensors in order to achieve high quality, faulttolerant sensing networks. Reliable environment monitoring is important in a variety of commercial and military
applications. For example, for a security system, acoustic,
seismic, and video sensors can be used to form an ad hoc

network to detect intrusions. Microsensors can also be used

to monitor machines for fault detection and diagnosis.
Microsensor networks can contain hundreds or thousands of sensing nodes. It is desirable to make these nodes
as cheap and energy-efficient as possible and rely on their
large numbers to obtain high quality results. Network protocols must be designed to achieve fault tolerance in the
presence of individual node failure while minimizing energy consumption. In addition, since the limited wireless
channel bandwidth must be shared among all the sensors
in the network, routing protocols for these networks should
be able to perform local collaboration to reduce bandwidth
requirements.
Eventually, the data being sensed by the nodes in the network must be transmitted to a control center or base station,
where the end-user can access the data. There are many possible models for these microsensor networks. In this work,
we consider microsensor networks where:




The base station is fixed and located far from the sensors.
All nodes in the network are homogeneous and energyconstrained.

Thus, communication between the sensor nodes and the

base station is expensive, and there are no high-energy
nodes through which communication can proceed. This is
the framework for MITs -AMPS project, which focuses
on innovative energy-optimized solutions at all levels of the
system hierarchy, from the physical layer and communication protocols up to the application layer and efficient DSP
design for microsensor nodes.
Sensor networks contain too much data for an end-user
to process. Therefore, automated methods of combining or
aggregating the data into a small set of meaningful information is required [7, 8]. In addition to helping avoid information overload, data aggregation, also known as data fusion,
can combine several unreliable data measurements to produce a more accurate signal by enhancing the common signal and reducing the uncorrelated noise. The classification

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Proceedings of the 33rd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences - 2000

performed on the aggregated data might be performed by a

human operator or automatically. Both the method of performing data aggregation and the classification algorithm
are application-specific. For example, acoustic signals are
often combined using a beamforming algorithm [5, 17] to
reduce several signals into a single signal that contains the
relevant information of all the individual signals. Large energy gains can be achieved by performing the data fusion or
classification algorithm locally, thereby requiring much less
data to be transmitted to the base station.
By analyzing the advantages and disadvantages of conventional routing protocols using our model of sensor networks, we have developed LEACH (Low-Energy Adaptive
Clustering Hierarchy), a clustering-based protocol that minimizes energy dissipation in sensor networks. The key features of LEACH are:





Localized coordination and control for cluster set-up

and operation.
Randomized rotation of the cluster base stations or
cluster-heads and the corresponding clusters.
Local compression to reduce global communication.

The use of clusters for transmitting data to the base station leverages the advantages of small transmit distances
for most nodes, requiring only a few nodes to transmit
far distances to the base station. However, LEACH outperforms classical clustering algorithms by using adaptive
clusters and rotating cluster-heads, allowing the energy requirements of the system to be distributed among all the
sensors. In addition, LEACH is able to perform local computation in each cluster to reduce the amount of data that
must be transmitted to the base station. This achieves a large
reduction in the energy dissipation, as computation is much
cheaper than communication.

ETx(d)
k bit packet

Transmit
Electronics

Tx Amplifier

Eelec* k

amp* k * d2

ERx
k bit packet

Receive
Electronics
Eelec* k

Figure 1. First order radio model.

Table 1. Radio characteristics.

Operation
Transmitter Electronics (ETx,elec )
Receiver Electronics (ERx,elec )
(ETx,elec = ERx,elec = Eelec )
Transmit Amplifier (amp )

Energy Dissipated
50 nJ/bit
100 pJ/bit/m2

radio expends:
ETx (k; d) = ETx,elec (k ) + ETx,amp (k; d)
ETx (k; d) = Eelec

 k + amp  k  d

(1)

and to receive this message, the radio expends:

ERx (k ) = ERx,elec (k )
ERx (k ) = Eelec

2. First Order Radio Model

Currently, there is a great deal of research in the area of
low-energy radios. Different assumptions about the radio
characteristics, including energy dissipation in the transmit
and receive modes, will change the advantages of different
protocols. In our work, we assume a simple model where
the radio dissipates Eelec = 50 nJ/bit to run the transmitter or receiver circuitry and amp = 100 pJ/bit/m2 for the
Eb (see Figure 1
transmit amplifier to achieve an acceptable N
o
and Table 1). These parameters are slightly better than the
1
current state-of-the-art in radio design . We also assume an
r2 energy loss due to channel transmission. Thus, to transmit a k -bit message a distance d using our radio model, the
1 For example, the Bluetooth initiative [1] specifies 700 Kbps radios that
operate at 2.7 V and 30 mA, or 115 nJ/bit.

k

(2)

For these parameter values, receiving a message is not a low

cost operation; the protocols should thus try to minimize not
only the transmit distances but also the number of transmit
and receive operations for each message.
We make the assumption that the radio channel is symmetric such that the energy required to transmit a message
from node A to node B is the same as the energy required
to transmit a message from node B to node A for a given
SNR. For our experiments, we also assume that all sensors
are sensing the environment at a fixed rate and thus always
have data to send to the end-user. For future versions of our
protocol, we will implement an event-driven simulation,
where sensors only transmit data if some event occurs in the
environment.

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Proceedings of the 33rd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences - 2000

3. Energy Analysis of Routing Protocols

n nodes

There have been several network routing protocols proposed for wireless networks that can be examined in the
context of wireless sensor networks. We examine two such
protocols, namely direct communication with the base station and minimum-energy multi-hop routing using our sensor network and radio models. In addition, we discuss a
conventional clustering approach to routing and the drawbacks of using such an approach when the nodes are all
energy-constrained.
Using a direct communication protocol, each sensor
sends its data directly to the base station. If the base station is far away from the nodes, direct communication will
require a large amount of transmit power from each node
(since d in Equation 1 is large). This will quickly drain the
battery of the nodes and reduce the system lifetime. However, the only receptions in this protocol occur at the base
station, so if either the base station is close to the nodes, or
the energy required to receive data is large, this may be an
acceptable (and possibly optimal) method of communication.
The second conventional approach we consider is a
minimum-energy routing protocol. There are several
power-aware routing protocols discussed in the literature [6,
9, 10, 14, 15]. In these protocols, nodes route data destined ultimately for the base station through intermediate
nodes. Thus nodes act as routers for other nodes data in
addition to sensing the environment. These protocols differ in the way the routes are chosen. Some of these protocols [6, 10, 14], only consider the energy of the transmitter
and neglect the energy dissipation of the receivers in determining the routes. In this case, the intermediate nodes
are chosen such that the transmit amplifier energy (e.g.,
ETx,amp (k; d) = amp  k  d2 ) is minimized; thus node
A would transmit to node C through node B if and only if:
ETx,amp (k; d = dAB ) + ETx,amp (k; d = dBC )
< ETx,amp (k; d = dAC )

or

d2AB + d2BC < d2AC

(3)
(4)

However, for this minimum-transmission-energy (MTE)

routing protocol, rather than just one (high-energy) transmit of the data, each data message must go through n (lowenergy) transmits and n receives. Depending on the relative costs of the transmit amplifier and the radio electronics,
the total energy expended in the system might actually be
greater using MTE routing than direct transmission to the
base station.
To illustrate this point, consider the linear network
shown in Figure 2, where the distance between the nodes
is r. If we consider the energy expended transmitting a single k -bit message from a node located a distance nr from

Base
Station
r
Figure 2. Simple linear network.

the base station using the direct communication approach

and Equations 1 and 2, we have:

 r)
 k + amp  k  (nr)

Edirect = ETx (k; d = n

= Eelec

2 2

= k (Eelec + amp n r )

(5)

In MTE routing, each node sends a message to the closest

node on the way to the base station. Thus the node located a
distance nr from the base station would require n transmits
a distance r and n , 1 receives.

 ETx (k; d = r) + (n , 1)  ERx (k)

= n(Eelec  k + amp  k  r ) + (n , 1)  Eelec  k
= k ((2n , 1)Eelec + amp nr )
EMTE = n

(6)

Therefore, direct communication requires less energy than

MTE routing if:

Eelec + amp n2 r2 < (2n

Edirect < EMTE

, 1)Eelec + amp nr
Eelec
amp

>

r2 n
2

(7)

Using Equations 1 - 6 and the random 100-node network

shown in Figure 3, we simulated transmission of data from
every node to the base station (located 100 m from the closest sensor node, at (x=0, y=-100)) using MATLAB. Figure 4
shows the total energy expended in the system as the network diameter increases from 10 m  10 m to 100 m  100
m and the energy expended in the radio electronics (i.e.,
Eelec ) increases from 10 nJ/bit to 100 nJ/bit, for the scenario where each node has a 2000-bit data packet to send to
the base station. This shows that, as predicted by our analysis above, when transmission energy is on the same order
as receive energy, which occurs when transmission distance
is short and/or the radio electronics energy is high, direct
transmission is more energy-efficient on a global scale than
MTE routing. Thus the most energy-efficient protocol to
use depends on the network topology and radio parameters
of the system.

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Proceedings of the 33rd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences - 2000

100

90

Number of sensors still alive

50

45

40

35

80

Direct

70

MTE

60

50

40

30

30

20

25

10

20

15

50

100

150

200
250
300
Time steps (rounds)

350

400

450

500

10

0
25

20

15

10

10

15

20

Figure 5. System lifetime using direct transmission and MTE routing with 0.5 J/node.

25

Figure 3. 100-node random network.

Total energy dissipated in system (Joules)

0.55

Direct
|
v

MTE >
0.5
0.45
0.4
0.35
0.3
0.25
0.2
1
0.8

100
0.6

x 10

80
60

0.4
40

0.2
Electronics energy (Joules/bit)

20
0

Network diameter (m)

Figure 4. Total energy dissipated in the 100node random network using direct communication and MTE routing (i.e., Edirect and
EMTE ). amp = 100 pJ/bit/m2 , and the messages are 2000 bits.

It is clear that in MTE routing, the nodes closest to the

base station will be used to route a large number of data
messages to the base station. Thus these nodes will die out
quickly, causing the energy required to get the remaining
data to the base station to increase and more nodes to die.
This will create a cascading effect that will shorten system
lifetime. In addition, as nodes close to the base station die,
that area of the environment is no longer being monitored.
To prove this point, we ran simulations using the random
100-node network shown in Figure 3 and had each sensor
send a 2000-bit data packet to the base station during each
time step or round of the simulation. After the energy
dissipated in a given node reached a set threshold, that node
was considered dead for the remainder of the simulation.
Figure 5 shows the number of sensors that remain alive after
each round for direct transmission and MTE routing with
each node initially given 0.5 J of energy. This plot shows
that nodes die out quicker using MTE routing than direct
transmission. Figure 6 shows that nodes closest to the base
station are the ones to die out first for MTE routing, whereas
nodes furthest from the base station are the ones to die out
first for direct transmission. This is as expected, since the
nodes close to the base station are the ones most used as
routers for other sensors data in MTE routing, and the
nodes furthest from the base station have the largest transmit
energy in direct communication.
A final conventional protocol for wireless networks is
clustering, where nodes are organized into clusters that
communicate with a local base station, and these local base
stations transmit the data to the global base station, where it
is accessed by the end-user. This greatly reduces the distance nodes need to transmit their data, as typically the
local base station is close to all the nodes in the cluster.

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Proceedings of the 33rd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences - 2000

4. LEACH: Low-Energy Adaptive Clustering

Hierarchy

50

45

40

Ycoordinate

35

30

25

20

15

10

0
25

20

15

10

10

15

20

25

10

15

20

25

Xcoordinate

50

45

40

Ycoordinate

35

30

25

20

15

10

0
25

20

15

10

Xcoordinate

Figure 6. Sensors that remain alive (circles)

and those that are dead (dots) after 180
rounds with 0.5 J/node for (a) direct transmission and (b) MTE routing.

Thus, clustering appears to be an energy-efficient communication protocol. However, the local base station is assumed to be a high-energy node; if the base station is an
energy-constrained node, it would die quickly, as it is being heavily utilized. Thus, conventional clustering would
perform poorly for our model of microsensor networks.
The Near Term Digital Radio (NTDR) project [12, 16], an
army-sponsored program, employs an adaptive clustering
approach, similar to our work discussed here. In this work,
cluster-heads change as nodes move in order to keep the
network fully connected. However, the NTDR protocol is
designed for long-range communication, on the order of 10s
of kilometers, and consumes large amounts of power, on the
order of 10s of Watts. Therefore, this protocol also does not
fit our model of sensor networks.

LEACH is a self-organizing, adaptive clustering protocol

that uses randomization to distribute the energy load evenly
among the sensors in the network. In LEACH, the nodes
organize themselves into local clusters, with one node acting as the local base station or cluster-head. If the clusterheads were chosen a priori and fixed throughout the system
lifetime, as in conventional clustering algorithms, it is easy
to see that the unlucky sensors chosen to be cluster-heads
would die quickly, ending the useful lifetime of all nodes
belonging to those clusters. Thus LEACH includes randomized rotation of the high-energy cluster-head position such
that it rotates among the various sensors in order to not drain
the battery of a single sensor. In addition, LEACH performs
local data fusion to compress the amount of data being
sent from the clusters to the base station, further reducing
energy dissipation and enhancing system lifetime.
Sensors elect themselves to be local cluster-heads at
any given time with a certain probability. These clusterhead nodes broadcast their status to the other sensors in
the network. Each sensor node determines to which cluster it wants to belong by choosing the cluster-head that requires the minimum communication energy2. Once all the
nodes are organized into clusters, each cluster-head creates
a schedule for the nodes in its cluster. This allows the radio
components of each non-cluster-head node to be turned off
at all times except during its transmit time, thus minimizing
the energy dissipated in the individual sensors. Once the
cluster-head has all the data from the nodes in its cluster, the
cluster-head node aggregates the data and then transmits the
compressed data to the base station. Since the base station
is far away in the scenario we are examining, this is a high
energy transmission. However, since there are only a few
cluster-heads, this only affects a small number of nodes.
As discussed previously, being a cluster-head drains the
battery of that node. In order to spread this energy usage
over multiple nodes, the cluster-head nodes are not fixed;
rather, this position is self-elected at different time intervals.
Thus a set C of nodes might elect themselves cluster-heads
at time t1 , but at time t1 + d a new set C 0 of nodes elect
themselves as cluster-heads, as shown in Figure 7. The decision to become a cluster-head depends on the amount of
energy left at the node. In this way, nodes with more energy remaining will perform the energy-intensive functions
of the network. Each node makes its decision about whether
to be a cluster-head independently of the other nodes in the
2 Note that typically this will be the cluster-head closest to the sensor.
However, if there is some obstacle impeding the communication between
two physically close nodes (e.g., a building, a tree, etc.) such that communication with another cluster-head, located further away, is easier, the sensor will choose the cluster-head that is spatially further away but closer
in a communication sense.

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Proceedings of the 33rd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences - 2000

1.1

45

40

0.9

Normalized energy dissipation

50

35

30

25

20

15

10

0.8

0.7

0.6

0.5

0.4

Direct Trans
0.3

LEACH
5

0
25

0.2

20

15

10

10

15

20

25

0.1

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

Percent of nodes that are cluster heads

50

45

Figure 8. Normalized total system energy dissipated versus the percent of nodes that are
cluster-heads. Note that direct transmission
is equivalent to 0 nodes being cluster-heads
or all the nodes being cluster-heads.

40

35

30

25

20

15

10

0
25

20

15

10

10

15

20

25

Figure 7. Dynamic clusters: (a) cluster-head

nodes = C at time t1 (b) cluster-head nodes
= C 0 at time t1 + d. All nodes marked with a
given symbol belong to the same cluster, and
the cluster-head nodes are marked with a .

network and thus no extra negotiation is required to determine the cluster-heads.

The system can determine, a priori, the optimal number
of clusters to have in the system. This will depend on several parameters, such as the network topology and the relative costs of computation versus communication. We simulated the LEACH protocol for the random network shown
in Figure 3 using the radio parameters in Table 1 and a computation cost of 5 nJ/bit/message to fuse 2000-bit messages
while varying the percentage of total nodes that are clusterheads. Figure 8 shows how the energy dissipation in the
system varies as the percent of nodes that are cluster-heads
is changed. Note that 0 cluster-heads and 100% clusterheads is the same as direct communication. From this plot,
^ that
we find that there exists an optimal percent of nodes N
^ clustershould be cluster-heads. If there are fewer than N
heads, some nodes in the network have to transmit their data
very far to reach the cluster-head, causing the global energy

^ clusterin the system to be large. If there are more than N

heads, the distance nodes have to transmit to reach the nearest cluster-head does not reduce substantially, yet there are
more cluster-heads that have to transmit data the long-haul
distances to the base station, and there is less compression
being performed locally. For our system parameters and
^ = 5%.
topology, N
Figure 8 also shows that LEACH can achieve over a factor of 7 reduction in energy dissipation compared to direct
communication with the base station, when using the optimal number of cluster-heads. The main energy savings of
the LEACH protocol is due to combining lossy compression
with the data routing. There is clearly a trade-off between
the quality of the output and the amount of compression
achieved. In this case, some data from the individual signals is lost, but this results in a substantial reduction of the
overall energy dissipation of the system.
We simulated LEACH (with 5% of the nodes being
cluster-heads) using MATLAB with the random network
shown in Figure 3. Figure 9 shows how these algorithms
compare using Eelec = 50 nJ/bit as the diameter of the network is increased. This plot shows that LEACH achieves
between 7x and 8x reduction in energy compared with direct communication and between 4x and 8x reduction in
energy compared with MTE routing. Figure 10 shows the
amount of energy dissipated using LEACH versus using direct communication and LEACH versus MTE routing as the
network diameter is increased and the electronics energy
varies. This figure shows the large energy savings achieved
using LEACH for most of the parameter space.

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Proceedings of the 33rd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences - 2000

Direct
MTE
LEACH

0.8

0.7

Total energy dissipated in system (Joules)

Total energy dissipated in system (Joules)

0.9

0.6

0.5

0.4

0.3

0.8

0.6

Direct >

0.4

0.2

LEACH
v|

0
1
0.8

0.2

200
0.6

x 10

150
0.4

0.1

100
0.2

20

40

60

80

100

120

140

160

180

50
0

Electronics energy (Joules/bit)

0

Network diameter (m)

200

Network diameter (m)

Total energy dissipated in system (Joules)

Figure 9. Total system energy dissipated using direct communication, MTE routing and
LEACH for the 100-node random network
shown in Figure 3. Eelec = 50 nJ/bit, amp =
100 pJ/bit/m2 , and the messages are 2000 bits.

0.6
0.5
< MTE

0.4
0.3
0.2
0.1

LEACH
v|

0
1
0.8

200
0.6

150
0.4

100
0.2

Electronics energy (Joules/bit)

50
0

Network diameter (m)

Figure 10. Total system energy dissipated

using (a) direct communication and LEACH
and (b) MTE routing and LEACH for the random network shown in Figure 3. amp =
100 pJ/bit/m2 , and the messages are 2000 bits.

100

90

80

70
Number of sensors still alive

In addition to reducing energy dissipation, LEACH successfully distributes energy-usage among the nodes in the
network such that the nodes die randomly and at essentially
the same rate. Figure 11 shows a comparison of system
lifetime using LEACH versus direct communication, MTE
routing, and a conventional static clustering protocol, where
the cluster-heads and associated clusters are chosen initially
and remain fixed and data fusion is performed at the clusterheads, for the network shown in Figure 3. For this experiment, each node was initially given 0.5 J of energy. Figure 11 shows that LEACH more than doubles the useful system lifetime compared with the alternative approaches. We
ran similar experiments with different energy thresholds and
found that no matter how much energy each node is given,
it takes approximately 8 times longer for the first node to
die and approximately 3 times longer for the last node to
die in LEACH as it does in any of the other protocols. The
data from these experiments is shown in Table 2. The advantage of using dynamic clustering (LEACH) versus static
clustering can be clearly seen in Figure 11. Using a static
clustering algorithm, as soon as the cluster-head node dies,
all nodes from that cluster effectively die since there is no
way to get their data to the base station. While these simulations do not account for the setup time to configure the
dynamic clusters (nor do they account for any necessary
routing start-up costs or updates as nodes die), they give
a good first order approximation of the lifetime extension
we can achieve using LEACH.

x 10

Direct
60

MTE
50

Static Clus
40

LEACH

30

20

10

200

400

600
800
Time steps (rounds)

1000

1200

1400

Figure 11. System lifetime using direct transmission, MTE routing, static clustering, and
LEACH with 0.5 J/node.

Another important advantage of LEACH, illustrated in

Figure 12, is the fact that nodes die in essentially a ran-

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Proceedings of the 33rd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences - 2000

50

45

Table 2. Lifetimes using different amounts of

initial energy for the sensors.

40

Protocol
Direct
MTE
Static Clustering
LEACH
Direct
MTE
Static Clustering
LEACH
Direct
MTE
Static Clustering
LEACH

0.25

0.5

Round first
node dies
55
5
41
394
109
8
80
932
217
15
106
1848

Round last
node dies
117
221
67
665
234
429
110
1312
468
843
240
2608

dom fashion. If Figure 12 is compared with Figure 6, we

see that the order in which nodes die using LEACH is much
more desirable than the order they die using direct communication or MTE routing. With random death, there is no
one section of the environment that is not being sensed as
nodes die, as occurs in the other protocols.

5. LEACH Algorithm Details

The operation of LEACH is broken up into rounds,
where each round begins with a set-up phase, when the clusters are organized, followed by a steady-state phase, when
data transfers to the base station occur. In order to minimize overhead, the steady-state phase is long compared to
the set-up phase.

5.1 Advertisement Phase

Initially, when clusters are being created, each node decides whether or not to become a cluster-head for the current
round. This decision is based on the suggested percentage
of cluster heads for the network (determined a priori) and
the number of times the node has been a cluster-head so
far. This decision is made by the node n choosing a random
number between 0 and 1. If the number is less than a threshold T (n), the node becomes a cluster-head for the current
round. The threshold is set as:

T (n) =

where P

,P (rmod P1 )

if n 2 G
otherwise

the desired percentage of cluster heads (e.g.,

is the set of nodes

P = 0:05), r = the current round, and G

Ycoordinate

35

Energy
(J/node)

30

25

20

15

10

0
25

20

15

10

0
Xcoordinate

10

15

20

25

Figure 12. Sensors that remain alive (circles)

and those that are dead (dots) after 1200
rounds with 0.5 J/node for LEACH. Note that
this shows the network 1020 rounds further
along than Figure 6.

that have not been cluster-heads in the last P1 rounds. Using this threshold, each node will be a cluster-head at some
point within P1 rounds. During round 0 (r = 0), each node
has a probability P of becoming a cluster-head. The nodes
that are cluster-heads in round 0 cannot be cluster-heads for
the next P1 rounds. Thus the probability that the remaining
nodes are cluster-heads must be increased, since there are
fewer nodes that are eligible to become cluster-heads. After P1 , 1 rounds, T = 1 for any nodes that have not yet
been cluster-heads, and after P1 rounds, all nodes are once
again eligible to become cluster-heads. Future versions of
this work will include an energy-based threshold to account
for non-uniform energy nodes. In this case, we are assuming that all nodes begin with the same amount of energy
and being a cluster-head removes approximately the same
amount of energy for each node.
Each node that has elected itself a cluster-head for the
current round broadcasts an advertisement message to the
rest of the nodes. For this cluster-head-advertisement
phase, the cluster-heads use a CSMA MAC protocol, and all
cluster-heads transmit their advertisement using the same
transmit energy. The non-cluster-head nodes must keep
their receivers on during this phase of set-up to hear the advertisements of all the cluster-head nodes. After this phase
is complete, each non-cluster-head node decides the cluster
to which it will belong for this round. This decision is based
on the received signal strength of the advertisement. Assuming symmetric propagation channels, the cluster-head
advertisement heard with the largest signal strength is the
cluster-head to whom the minimum amount of transmitted

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Proceedings of the 33rd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences - 2000

energy is needed for communication. In the case of ties, a

random cluster-head is chosen.

5.2 Cluster Set-Up Phase

After each node has decided to which cluster it belongs,

it must inform the cluster-head node that it will be a member
of the cluster. Each node transmits this information back to
the cluster-head again using a CSMA MAC protocol. During this phase, all cluster-head nodes must keep their receivers on.

A
C

5.3 Schedule Creation

The cluster-head node receives all the messages for
nodes that would like to be included in the cluster. Based
on the number of nodes in the cluster, the cluster-head node
creates a TDMA schedule telling each node when it can
transmit. This schedule is broadcast back to the nodes in
the cluster.

5.4 Data Transmission

Once the clusters are created and the TDMA schedule
is fixed, data transmission can begin. Assuming nodes always have data to send, they send it during their allocated
transmission time to the cluster head. This transmission
uses a minimal amount of energy (chosen based on the
received strength of the cluster-head advertisement). The
radio of each non-cluster-head node can be turned off until the nodes allocated transmission time, thus minimizing
energy dissipation in these nodes. The cluster-head node
must keep its receiver on to receive all the data from the
nodes in the cluster. When all the data has been received,
the cluster head node performs signal processing functions
to compress the data into a single signal. For example, if
the data are audio or seismic signals, the cluster-head node
can beamform the individual signals to generate a composite signal. This composite signal is sent to the base station.
Since the base station is far away, this is a high-energy transmission.
This is the steady-state operation of LEACH networks.
After a certain time, which is determined a priori, the next
round begins with each node determining if it should be a
cluster-head for this round and advertising this information,
as described in Section 5.1.

5.5. Multiple Clusters

The preceding discussion describes how the individual
clusters communicate among nodes in that cluster. However, radio is inherently a broadcast medium. As such,
transmission in one cluster will affect (and hence degrade)

Figure 13. Radio interference. Node As transmission to node B corrupts any transmission
to node C.

communication in a nearby cluster. For example, Figure 13 shows the range of communication for a radio. Node
As transmission, while intended for Node B, corrupts any
transmission to Node C. To reduce this type of interference,
each cluster communicates using different CDMA codes.
Thus, when a node decides to become a cluster-head, it
chooses randomly from a list of spreading codes. It informs
all the nodes in the cluster to transmit using this spreading
code. The cluster-head then filters all received energy using
the given spreading code. Thus neighboring clusters radio
signals will be filtered out and not corrupt the transmission
of nodes in the cluster.
Efficient channel assignment is a difficult problem3, even
when there is a central control center that can perform the
necessary algorithms. Using CDMA codes, while not necessarily the most bandwidth efficient solution, does solves
the problem of multiple-access in a distributed manner.

5.6. Hierarchical Clustering

The version of LEACH described in this paper can be
extended to form hierarchical clusters. In this scenario, the
cluster-head nodes would communicate with super-clusterhead nodes and so on until the top layer of the hierarchy,
at which point the data would be sent to the base station.
For larger networks, this hierarchy could save a tremendous
amount of energy. In future studies, we will explore the details of implementing this protocol without using any support from the base station, and determine, via simulation,
exactly how much energy can be saved.
3 In fact, the authors in [13] assert that it is NP-complete.

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Proceedings of the 33rd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences - 2000

6. Conclusions

References

In this paper, we described LEACH, a clustering-based

routing protocol that minimizes global energy usage by distributing the load to all the nodes at different points in time.
LEACH outperforms static clustering algorithms by requiring nodes to volunteer to be high-energy cluster-heads and
adapting the corresponding clusters based on the nodes that
choose to be cluster-heads at a given time. At different
times, each node has the burden of acquiring data from the
nodes in the cluster, fusing the data to obtain an aggregate
signal, and transmitting this aggregate signal to the base station. LEACH is completely distributed, requiring no control
information from the base station, and the nodes do not require knowledge of the global network in order for LEACH
to operate.
Distributing the energy among the nodes in the network
is effective in reducing energy dissipation from a global perspective and enhancing system lifetime. Specifically, our
simulations show that:

[1] Bluetooth Project. http://www.bluetooth.com, 1999.

[2] Chandrakasan, Amirtharajah, Cho, Goodman, Konduri, Kulik, Rabiner, and Wang. Design Considerations for Distributed Microsensor Systems. In IEEE 1999 Custom Integrated Circuits Conference (CICC), pages 279286, May
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[3] Clare, Pottie, and Agre. Self-Organizing Distributed Sensor Networks. In SPIE Conference on Unattended Ground
Sensor Technologies and Applications, pages 229237, Apr.
1999.
[4] M. Dong, K. Yung, and W. Kaiser. Low Power Signal
Processing Architectures for Network Microsensors. In
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[7] D. Hall. Mathematical Techniques in Multisensor Data Fusion. Artech House, Boston, MA, 1992.
[8] L. Klein. Sensor and Data Fusion Concepts and Applications. SPIE Optical Engr Press, WA, 1993.
[9] X. Lin and I. Stojmenovic. Power-Aware Routing in Ad Hoc
Wireless Networks. In SITE, University of Ottawa, TR-9811, Dec. 1998.
[10] T. Meng and R. Volkan. Distributed Network Protocols
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[11] UCB/LBNL/VINT Network Simulator - ns (Version 2).
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[12] R. Ruppe, S. Griswald, P. Walsh, and R. Martin. Near Term
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[14] T. Shepard. A Channel Access Scheme for Large Dense
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Blind Beamforming on a Randomly Distributed Sensor Array System. Proceedings of SiPS, Oct. 1998.




LEACH reduces communication energy by as much as

8x compared with direct transmission and minimumtransmission-energy routing.
The first node death in LEACH occurs over 8 times
later than the first node death in direct transmission,
minimum-transmission-energy routing, and a static
clustering protocol, and the last node death in LEACH
occurs over 3 times later than the last node death in the
other protocols.

In order to verify our assumptions about LEACH, we

are currently extending the network simulator ns [11] to
simulate LEACH, direct communication, and minimumtransmission-energy routing. This will verify our assumptions and give us a more accurate picture of the advantages
and disadvantages of the different protocols. Based on our
MATLAB simulations described above, we are confident
that LEACH will outperform conventional communication
protocols, in terms of energy dissipation, ease of configuration, and system lifetime/quality of the network. Providing
such a low-energy, ad hoc, distributed protocol will help
pave the way for future microsensor networks.

Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for the helpful comments and suggestions. W. Heinzelman is supported by a Kodak Fellowship. This work was
funded in part by DARPA.

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