2014 International Conference on Control, Instrumentation, Energy & Communication(CIEC) 508

Leader Selection in Wireless Sensor Networks —

An Energy Efficient Approach

Joydeep Banerjee & Mrinal Kanti Naskar
Department of Electronics
& Telecommunication Engineering
Jadavpur University
Kolkata 700037
Email: iamjoydeepbanerjee@gmail.com &
mrinalnaskar@yahoo.co.in
Utpal Biswas
Department of Computer
Science & Engg
University of Kalyani
Nadia, West Bengal 741235
Email: utpal01in@yahoo.co.in
Omar Alfandi & Dieter Hogrefe
Institute of Informatics
SensorLab, Telematics Group
Georg-August-Universitt Göttingen
Göttingen, Germany
Email: alfandi@cs.uni-goettingen.de &
hogrefe@informatik.uni-goettingen.de

Abstract—Wireless Sensor Networks have found its applica-
tion in numerous domains. Limited energy of the sensor nodes is
the main constraint in operation of the network. Several energy
efficient routing protocols have been proposed to deal with this
problem. In this paper we propose a leader selection algorithm
for these routing protocols to enhance the network lifetime to a
greater extent. Distance of the node from base station, degree of
connectivity of the node and trust level of the node is individually
analyzed and is linearly combined with weights associated with
each parameter. This gives the overall potential function of a
node to become a leader. The number of rounds after which
leader selection takes place is also equated. Through simulation
the algorithm is compared with traditional energy-distance based
method for routing protocols LBEERA, OREC, PEGASIS and
SHORT. Significant improvement of network lifetime is obtained
using this leader selection algorithm. Highest improvement of
more than 8% increase in network lifetime is observed when
distance of the node from the base station is given a higher
linear combination weight.
Keywords—Wireless Sensor Network, Leader Selection, Network
Lifetime, Energy Efficient.
In this paper we propose a leader selection algorithm
for routing protocols. Parameters to judge the potential of a
node to be a leader is analyzed to devise an energy efficient
leader selection algorithm. The main parameters taken into
consideration are distance of the node from base station,
degree of connectivity of the node and trust level of the node.
These parameters are coupled with remaining energy of the
node for load balancing among leaders. The efficiency of the
algorithm is compared with traditional energy-distance based
leader selection made in routing protocols. The metric used
for this comparison is the number of rounds of successful data
transfer (i.e. if a selfish node is chosen as a leader and sends
ambiguous packets to base station then it is not considered as
a round of data transfer but energy of the network decreases)
to the base station. Though this algorithm is mainly focused
on centralized data transfer but it can also be extended to
distributed data transfer like LBEERA [5], OREC [11] with
more than one leader in the network. The major contribution
of this paper are listed below—-

I. I NTRODUCTION • Potential of a node in the network to become a leader

Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) finds its application in
numerous domains [1]. It consists of sensor nodes deployed
in a region following a topology and defined connectivity.
The main constraint that WSN faces is the limited battery
capacity (energy) which cannot be replaced in most applica-
tions. Several energy efficient clustering algorithma [2] and
load balancing routing protocols [3], [4], [5], [11] have been
proposed to overcome this issue.
Choosing leaders in routing protocol and cluster heads in
clustering algorithms for routing the data to the base station
is crucial for increasing the network lifetime. There can be
significant decrease of energy efficiency if the leader selection
is not done appropriately. Efficient cluster head selection has
been extensively studied in various research articles [6], [7],
[8], [9], [10]. The techniques used are mainly fuzzy based
and can be applied to clustering algorithms like LEACH [2].
However, its applicability to routing protocols like PEGASIS
[4], SHORT [3], LBEERA[5], OREC [11] etc. has not been
looked upon. Trust level of a sensor node to identify selfish
behavior of a node should also be taken into consideration in
developing a leader selection algorithm.
is first analyzed for each individual parameters in
separate. Mathematical expressions are derived which
gives potential of a node to be a leader with respect
to distance of the node from base station, degree of
connectivity of the node and trust level of the node.
• The parameters are superposed linearly to get the
overall potential of a node to become a leader. The
algorithm follows from this which described the whole
leader selection protocol framed.
• The algorithm is compared with energy-distance based
leader selection algorithm for different routing algo-
rithms. This provides the efficiency of the proposed
routing algorithm.
The paper is divided as follows — Section 2 gives the re-
lated work, Section 3 introduces the design of leader selection
protocol with respect to different parameters, Section 4 frames
the algorithm based on the design in Section 3, Section 5 gives
the simulation results and we conclude in Section 6.

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 2014 International Conference on Control, Instrumentation, Energy & Communication(CIEC) 509

II. R ELATED W ORK
Cluster head selection in clustering algorithms for in-
creasing energy efficiency in WSN has been researched quite
deeply. In [6] the authors proposed a fuzzy logic for cluster
head selection to reduce dependence on energy and distance
overheads in large sensor networks. Fuzzy approach to select
cluster heads using node energy, location of a node and quality
of service had been done in [7] and with distance from base
station and sum of distance between nodes in [8]. Authors
in [9] discussed about distributed cluster head election for
heterogeneous network. [10] also extended the fuzzy based
approach in cluster head selection with residual energy of the
node, number of neighbors and distance from the base station.
Though existing research work considers the parameters
residual energy, distance of the node from base station and
number of neighbors yet they have not been extensively
analyzed individually. Moreover research work in leader se-
lection in energy efficient routing protocol is not prominent
in literature as most works considers cluster head selection for
clustering protocols like LEACH [2]. Our work deals with this
problem and also includes the notion of trust in designing the
leader selection algorithm.
III. D ESIGN OF L EADER S ELECTION P ROTOCOL
We identify three major parameters in designing the pro-
tocol as listed below.
• Distance of the node from the sink
• Degree of the node
• Trust level of the node
To frame the algorithm of the protocol we develop the
dependency of leader selection on the above mentioned pa-
rameters individually.
To derive the dependence metric for this parameter we
consider a two dimensional field with nodes represented as
points relative to axis X and Y . The axis can be drawn in
any fashion as the metric is independent on the position or
orientation of the axis. We define a metric Pld (i, t) as the
potential of a node i to become a leader at any round t with
respect to its distance from the base station as —
1
Pld (i, t) =
(xi − x1 − λ1 x2 )2 + (yi − y1 − λ2 y2 )2 + k 2
(1)
Where (x1 , y1 ) is the co-ordinate of the base station,
(x2 , y2 ) is the co-ordinate of the center most point in the
topology (the center most point is determined by joining the
nodes towards the end of the topology to get an approximate
boundary and finding the center most point in structure defined
by the boundary) and (xi , yi ) is the co-ordinate of the ith node
in the network with i = 1, 2, ...N (where N is the total number
of nodes in the network). The weights λ1 and λ2 on the co-
ordinate (x2 , y2 ) is determined by putting the individual terms
(xi − x1 − λ1 x2 )2 and (yi − y1 − λ2 y2 )2 to 0. This is done
as when a node in the topology (if present) corresponds to the
center most point in the topology then the metric Pld should
be maximum for that node and would be equal to k 2 . This
gives λ1 = x2x−x 1
and λ2 = y2y−y 1
. The value of k is taken as
 2 2
2 2
(x2 − x1 ) + (y2 − y1 ) which is the distance between the
center most point in the topology and the base station. So the
maximum value of the metric is given as Pldmax = k12 .
The parameter Pld (i, t) is normalized with respect to Pld
of all other nodes in the network. This normalized parameter
is termed as ωD (i, t) and is expressed as —
Pld (i, t)
ωD (i, t) = N (2)
j=1 Pld (j, t)

A. Distance of node from the sink

The energy dissipated by a leader is approximated to be
inversely proportional to the square of distance of leader node
from base station [4], [3], [5], [11]. For arriving to a more
accurate relation we perform simulation in MATLAB taking
a square grid topology (as in Figure 1). The experimental
setup is built with SHORT protocol [3] used for data routing
with each node in the network forced to be a leader without
any constraint for 100 rounds of data transfer. The energy
dissipated by the whole network is calculated for each node
being a leader. The total number of nodes in the square grid
topology are 49 with grid space of 10m. The distance between
sink node and nearest node from the sink is also taken as 10m.
The energy dissipated in routing of packets is calculated using
the power control algorithm proposed in [11]. Figure 2 gives
the variation of the total energy dissipated per node by the
network with distance of the leader node from the sink. A
close investigation of Figure 2 yields that nodes with distance
midway between the closest and farthest node in the network
from base station has more energy efficient data transfer when
selected as the leader node. This essentially disproves the
Fig. 1: Square grid topology and its connectivity
inverse square relationship of distance of node from sink with
its potential to be a leader.
 2014 International Conference on Control, Instrumentation, Energy & Communication(CIEC)
Fig. 2: Energy consumed per node vs distance of leader node
from base station plot
B. Degree of connectivity of the node
The instantaneous degree of connectivity a node κ(i, t) also
dictates the energy efficiency of the network in leader selection.
The energy dissipated by a node depends on the size of data
packet it receives. So a leader node with high degree would
decrease the energy of the node drastically after each round
of data transfer due to large amount of energy dissipated for
receiving large number of data packets. Moreover, for a leader
node with low degree would increase the energy consumption
in the network as for some packets requiring to be transmitted
through a greater distance(more than or equal to two hops)
which would otherwise be directly transmitted to the leader
node.
Fig. 3: Triangle topology and the degree of connectivity of
each node
We use simulation results using MATLAB to quantify this
dependency. We consider a triangular topology with n(n+1) 2 i=1 Pt (i, t)
numbers of nodes. The value of n is the number of nodes in
the base of the triangle. We have taken n as 7 i.e. 28 nodes are
taken into consideration (as shown in Figure 3) and each node
are given a node√id i, i = 1, 2, ...28. The nodes are separated
by a distance of 2d or 2d depending whether the vertical or
horizontal nodes are considered respectively. To establish the
connectivity of the graph from the given topology (i.e. to get
κ(i, t) value for each node) a maximum transmission distance
510
TABLE I: average energy consumption per node in the network
verses degree of the node
κ(i, t) Average Energy Consumption (J)
1 49.7
2 43.6
3 44.3
4 48.3
of 3d
2 is considered. So, using this definition, the value of κi, t
for any node is restricted to either 2, 4 or 6. For each node in
the topology the average energy consumption of the network
for 100 rounds of data transfer to base station via the selected
node as leader is calculated. Power calculations is done using
[11] and SHORT [3] protocol is used for routing. Table 1 gives
the node ids corresponding to the degree κ of the node and the
average energy consumption of the network for those nodes in
the network.
Based on the observations from the experiment we define
a relationship between the node degree of a node i κ(i, t) and
its potential to be a leader Pln (i, t) as
1
Pln (i, t) = (max(κ(i,t))+min(κ(i,t))
(κ(i, t) − max(κ(i,t))+min(κ(i,t)) 2
) + )
2 2
(3)
The equation 3 is normalized with respect to the sum of Pln
values in the network. The dependence of degree parameter
denoted by ωN (i, t) is given by the equation 4.
Pln (i, t)
ωN (i, t) = N (4)
i=1 Pln (i, t)
The potential parameter for degree connectivity of the
node should allocate higher potential for nodes which have
connectivity as arithmetic mean of highest and smallest de-
gree node (as given by simulation result shown in Table 1).
Equation 3 does that with a maximum potential Plnmax =
1
max(κ(i,t))+(min(κ(i,t)) .
2
C. Trust level of the node
A selfish leader would result in frequent resending of same
packets to base station due to incorrect or no packet received
from a given request. This would result in decrease of the
energy efficiency of the system. We calculate the trust metric
from [12] and for any node i we denote it by Pt (i, t). The
dependence of trust is reflected by the normalized parameter
ωτ (i, t) and is given in equation 5.
Pt (i, t)
ωτ (i, t) = N (5)
IV. L EADER S ELECTION P ROTOCOL A LGORITHM
To get an expression for the effective potential of a node
to be a leader, the parameters should be combined taking into
consideration their dependency. The parameters ωD , ωN and
ωτ can be superposed linearly with individual weights α, β
and γ respectively associated with them. This is so because
 2014 International Conference on Control, Instrumentation, Energy & Communication(CIEC) 511

the individual parameters are independent of each other (i.e. Data: network topology,number of nodes n, initial
one parameter doesn’t influence the value of other), the only energy of each node, length of data packet,
difference being that one parameter may have higher priority routing protocol R1 , α, β, γ
in assigning leader selection protocol than the other. So the Result: leader selected and number of rounds for which
effective potential ω(i, t) of a node to be a leader is expressed it is selected (numberof round)
as in equation 6 Initialization: K, ωD , ωN , ωτ =n × 1 elements of 0,
round=0, recompute=0, leader=0;
Compute ωD , ωN , ωτ for all nodes at round=0;
ω(i, t) = E(i, t) × (αωD (i, t) + βωN (i, t) + γωτ (i, t)) (6) while At least 20% of node in the network is present do
recompute=0;
Select node with highest ω as leader;
In equation 6 the term E(i, t) which gives the energy of Compute numberof round = min(K − kleader );
the node i at any particular instant is introduced so as to while numberofround>0 do
distribute the leaders through out the network and relief any Send data packet to base station using the
particular node to be a leader every time resulting in fast energy selected node as leader and with routing
depletion. The linear combination parameters follows the rule protocol R1 ;
α +β +γ = 1 and (α, β, γ > 0) To relax the base station from numberof round=numberof round-1;
leader selection computation at each round of data transfer round=round+1;
we forecast the number of rounds after which leader selection end
would occur. An array K = [k1 k2 ...kn ] is computed whose ith for p=1:n do
element is zero which corresponds to the current leader node if E(i, round) < Eth then
and other entries kj gives the number of rounds after which the E(i, round)=0;
node j can be a leader when node i is selected as the leader. set recompute=1;
Using energy calculation as in [11] the energy cost of sending end
a packet from the node i (leader node) of defined length to the end
base station can be calculated and is denoted as Esend (i, t). if recompute then
For all other nodes the energy cost is calculated considering Recompute ωD , ωN ;
the the distance to which it transmits the packet at the time end
instant t and is denoted as Esend (j, t). The array components Recompute ωτ ;
kj can be calculated as the the number of rounds after which a end
leader node i has its potential reduced and becomes the same Algorithm 1: Leader Selection Algorithm
as that of node j when the leader node i is elected at time
instant t and is given as in equation 7.

V. S IMULATION AND R ESULTS

ω(i, t)
(E(i, t) − kj Esend (i, t)) × = The simulation is done in MATLAB. Grid topology as
E(i, t)
ω(j, t) in Figure 1 is considered with spacings as described in
(E(j, t) − kj Esend (j, t)) × (7) Section 3.1. The communication energy model as in [11] is
E(j, t) considered. The packet length is taken to be as 200 bits. 100
nodes are considered in the network with initial energy of
The value kj for each element of the array K − ki is given 500mJ and threshold energy Eth = 10mJ. The simulation is
as in equation 8. run using routing protocols LBEERA, OREC, PEGASIS and
SHORT with leader selection protocol as in Algorithm 1 and
four different linear combination parameters. Figure 4 — 7
ω(i, t) − ω(j, t) compares the energy-distance based leader selection algorithm
kj = ω(i,t) ω(j,t)
(8)
Esend (i, t) × E(i,t) − Esend (j, t) × E(j,t)
with Algorithm 1 for different routing protocols and different
linear combination values. The comparison metric is taken as
the number of rounds of data transfer (network lifetime) after
The minimum value of K − ki gives the number of data which 80% of the nodes in the network dies.
transfer rounds after which leader selection is again done. The
parameters ωi and ωN are computed if there is a change in the
network topology (i.e whenever any one or more of the node The network lifetime increases across all the experiments.
in the network dies). ωτ is computed at every point whenever But for greater value of α, i.e. potential with respect to distance
the leader selection is done to include the dynamics of trust of the node from base station, increases the network lifetime to
behavior of the nodes.The algorithm of the leader selection more than 8% for all routing protocol as evident from Figure
is shown in Algorithm 1. It is considered that the network 6. The lowest network lifetime increase is obtained when β
becomes dysfunctional when 20% of the node dies. is given a higher weight. This shows that leader selection
protocol depends loosely on the degree of connectivity of
Algorithm 1 is polynomial time solvable and hence no the nodes. Optimization of the linear combination values for
approximation algorithm is required. The parameter Eth in different routing protocols (it may happen that different routing
Algorithm 1 is the minimum energy at which a node becomes protocol have different optimal linear combination value) is not
dysfunctional. included in this article and is left for future work.
 2014 International Conference on Control, Instrumentation, Energy & Communication(CIEC)
Fig. 4: Comparison chart with α = 0.33, β = 0.33 & γ = 0.33
Fig. 5: Comparison chart with α = 0.25, β = 0.25 & γ = 0.5
VI. C ONCLUSION
In this paper an energy efficient leader selection algorithm
for routing protocol is designed and is compared with existing
energy-distance based leader selection. Linear combination
of three parameters — distance of the node form the base
station, degree of connectivity of the node and trust level of
the node coupled with its instantaneous energy determines the
potential of a node to be a leader. The combination parameters
α, β, γ shows that maximum network lifetime enhancement
can be achieved using higher combination value α for the
potential parameter distance from the node ωD . In all other
cases considered the leader selection algorithm dominates the
existing algorithm for leader selection in routing protocols.
Future work can be extended in getting an optimal value
for linear combination values at which the network lifetime
enhancement is maximum.
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Fig. 7: Comparison chart with α = 0.25, β = 0.5 & γ = 0.25
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