A Multi‐Parameter Adaptive LEACH Routing Framework for Energy‐Efficient Wireless Sensor Networks

ABSTRACT Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are constrained by limited energy resources, making energy‐efficient routing a critical challenge. Traditional protocols such as Flooding and AODV suffer from high energy consumption, redundant transmissions and poor scalability. Although LEACH improves efficiency through clustering, its random cluster‐head (CH) selection leads to imbalanced energy usage. This paper proposes an Intelligent Adaptive LEACH (IA‐LEACH) routing protocol that incorporates a lightweight multi‐parameter decision model for adaptive CH selection. The proposed approach computes a cluster‐head suitability score based on residual energy, distance to the base station and node density, enabling deterministic CH selection and balanced energy consumption. Simulation results demonstrate that IA‐LEACH outperforms LEACH, AODV and Flooding. It achieves the lowest energy consumption (∼0.2 J per round), compared to AODV (∼1.6 J) and Flooding (∼2.8 J), while maintaining higher residual energy. IA‐LEACH also exhibits lower latency (∼0.4 s) than LEACH (∼0.5 s), AODV (∼1.0 s) and Flooding (∼2.0 s). Furthermore, it extends network lifetime beyond LEACH and AODV while maintaining a packet delivery ratio of ∼0.9. These results confirm that adaptive clustering significantly improves energy efficiency, network lifetime and overall WSN performance.