Stable Period as a Primary Performance Indicator for Energy-Balanced WSN Clustering Protocols: A Case Study with LEACH, LEACH-C, RE-LEACH, and DART-WSN
Keywords:
Cluster head selection, Energy efficiency, Stable period, Stable period quality Index, Wireless sensor networksAbstract
Background: Network lifetime in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) is conventionally reported using First Node Death (FND), Half Node Death (HND), and Last Node Death (LND). These metrics do not fully capture quality of service, since a high LND can result from a few isolated surviving nodes rather than genuinely useful network behaviour.
Objectives: This study adopts the Stable Period (SP) - the number of rounds from start-up until the first node dies, numerically equal to First Node Death (FND) - as the primary performance indicator for WSN clustering protocols, being the only phase in which every deployed node is alive (full node-level coverage). Three established protocols - LEACH, LEACH-C, and RE-LEACH - are compared against DART-WSN, the authors' own previously proposed protocol, using SP as the central metric, supported by the Instability Period (IP), the SP-to-LND Ratio, and a composite Stable Period Quality Index (SPQI).
Methodology: A 100-node WSN was deployed over a 100 m × 100 m field with a fixed base station and simulated in MATLAB using the first-order radio energy model over 2000 rounds. Cluster-head election, residual energy, and node-death timing were recorded and used to compute all metrics.
Results: LEACH-C achieved the longest Stable Period (870 rounds, 92.9%) and the highest SPQI (0.939) at the default weighting alpha = 0.6; a sensitivity analysis shows that LEACH ranks first for alpha below about 0.52. DART-WSN gave the shortest SP (548 rounds, 53.4%), which is attributed to its large early cluster-head counts (15-18 per round). LEACH recorded the highest LND (1105 rounds), consistent with late-surviving nodes rather than useful network operation.
Conclusions: Protocols optimised for LND sacrifice Stable Period, and the SPQI ranking depends on the chosen weighting. Reporting SP, IP, and SP Ratio alongside FND, HND, and LND is recommended for WSN protocol evaluation.
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