Energy‐Efficient UAV‐Assisted Mobile Sink LEACH Protocol for Precision Agriculture Wireless Sensor Networks

ABSTRACT Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) enable real‐time monitoring in precision agriculture but are constrained by limited node energy. The LEACH protocol mitigates this through clustering but suffers from uneven energy depletion due to static sink placement. This paper proposes an Enhanced LEACH protocol incorporating a UAV‐based mobile sink following a circular trajectory to reduce communication distance. MATLAB simulations with 100 nodes over 5000 rounds show that the proposed method improves early network stability by 65%, increases packet delivery by 22%, and enhances energy efficiency by 38% compared with standard LEACH. Although a slight reduction in packet delivery ratio is observed, overall throughput and network lifetime are significantly improved. The proposed approach provides a computationally efficient and scalable solution for UAV‐assisted wireless sensor networks in precision agriculture.