Optimal Number of Cluster Heads in Wireless Sensors Networks Based on LEACH

The Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) has been one of the leading research fields of wireless networks, particularly in recent year. Sensors are randomly positioned in the region, every node senses the surroundings and sends the data collected to the cluster head (CH), which aggregates and transmits obtained information to the Base Station (BS). A non-rechargeable battery is included on each WSN node. The sensor energy and network life extension of WSN are the most important considerations in the academia and industry. And thus, many routing protocols have been proposed to solve this issue, one of these is LEACH, the early protocol that introduced the clustering idea to extend the life of the WSN. LEACH is affected by the number of heads of the Clusters as it is randomly selected, and this has an impact on network lifetime, furthermore, the nodes are randomly joined in each cluster, this means that some of the cluster heads work more than others with fewer cluster nodes. In this paper, it is proposed an algorithm Maximum Optimal Number of Cluster Heads (MONCH) to identify the optimum cluster heads in WSN and to find which is the nearest one to BS and helps to integrate nodes with the most appropriate cluster. The results show improved energy consumption performance for the LEACH algorithm.